The prospect of playing a World Series of Poker bracelet event is different for every player. For professional poker players, the forthcoming GGPoker and WSOP.com hosted series provides a chance to earn more money in MTTs than would usually be possible, with swelled player fields and big guaranteed prizepools.
For the regular player who turns a profit at the game, some of the events represent a chance to up the stakes and take a shot at a bigger top prize than would usually be possible. There will be a huge number of player who take on the events that are recreationals, however, and they’ll be hoping to do so by travelling on the Silk Road.
What’s the Silk Road? Well, it’s a satellite path where you can enter World Series events for as little as $2. We’ve come a long way from Chris Moneymaker, haven’t we? With millions of online poker players reveling in the ability to play in multiple series events in the last few months, the lack of live poker tournaments – in particular the Las Vegas-based WSOP itself – has been tough to take. These sorts of promotions make up for a lot of the value lost, however.
There are no steps or satellites, with each event leading to a direct ticket, which means that for many events, only a handful – or fingerful – of tickets will be available. You’ll need to perfect that short-handed game in order to do well, then, and in that sense, these events play a little more like a freeroll with one or two big prizes than satellite events with 20-30 tickets on offer in every single game.
There’s even more on offer for the most consistent player, too. If you were to win the Silk Road Leaderboard, you’ll get a $5,000-entry ticket into the $25 million guaranteed WSOP Main Event, with the Silk Road leaderboard running from July 1st to August 29th.
With as many positive comments on social media about the value of playing in these tournaments as there have been negative remarks about the devaluing of the bracelets themselves, players are clearly a little split on which is best – total inclusion of anyone playing bracelet events or more prestige.
The idea of a World Series of Poker event being a clash of the best players in that particular format is one that died a long time ago, as ever since the Chris Moneymaker win in the Main Event of 2003, players have flocked to qualify for bracelet events for a fraction of the entry price for each event.
If $2 is too little for some to find the win prestigious, then there are higher ticket tournament buy-ins that come with a little more cache. We think the Silk Road initiative is a great way of giving as many players as possible the chance to say that they’ve played in – or maybe even won – a WSOP bracelet event.
You can read all about the Silk Road and check out the schedule of events you can take part in right here.
