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The Player Voting for the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions

As of 1:00 p.m. ET, on March 26th, 2010, Friday, the poker circuit had cast a total of 180,827 votes for the 2010 WSOP (world series of poker) Tournament of Champions. Voting started on March 15th, 2010 and will end on June 15th, 2010.

Only former World Series of Poker bracelet holders are qualified for entry into the 2010 World Series of poker tournament of Champions, which will have an all-star game tournament format.

There are five hundred twenty-one eligible players and astonishingly, all but one of them has received a vote in their name. According to Harrah's Entertainment officials, with one hundred eighty thousand votes divided across 520 players (an average of 346 votes each), it is still anyone's ball game. The top twenty will receive their tickets to the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions.

The Communications Director for Harrah's Interactive Entertainment and the World Series of Poker, Seth Palansky, said that he was very happy with the pace of voting for the tournament. He said that it is still too early to determine who will be the participants in the tournament and they have to wait for the end of the voting period in June 15th, 2010 to know the results.

Palansky said that the 180,000 votes cast in the first eleven days of the voting period exceed their expectations. He added that each voter can pick twenty individuals. Currently, there is a two-way tie for 19th position in the leader board. The tournament will begin on June 27th, 2010 from the Rio in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The final nine poker players will return to the Rio Casino on July 4th, 2010 to determine the winner. A total of $1 million is at stake and 1/3 of the playing field will finish in the money. The champion of the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions will take home $500,000 while the runner-up will take home $250,000. The 3rd place will earn $100,000 and the 4th to 9th place finishers will take home $25,000 each.

Given the large-dollar payouts at stake in the tournament, Harrah's Entertainment officials have taken necessary steps to avoid any artificial voting software. The champions of the three previous installments of the tournament receive automatic entry into the twenty-seven player freeroll event. As such, Full Tilt Poker's Mike Matusow, UB.com poker pro Annie Duke and WPT (world poker tour) host Mike Sexton are included in the playing field.

2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada and 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event champion Barry Shulman also received automatic entry. Two slots in the Tournament of Champions playing field are reserved for sponsor exemptions.

According to Seth Palansky, two online poker qualifiers will take to the poker felts to compete against twenty-five bracelet winners.

05/18/2010, Tuesday
Sherry Barlow

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