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Sporting News’ Sloan Piva sat down with Ryan Beauregard of Wynn Las Vegas, to learn more about the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. The landmark event will run from December 1 through December 20 and feature a $15 million guaranteed prize pool at its main event. Sporting News’ Sloan Piva sat down with Ryan Beauregard of Wynn Las Vegas, to learn more about the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. The landmark event will run from December 1 through December 20 and feature a $15 million guaranteed prize pool at its main event.

Just hours before Wynn kicked off a 1,300-person poker tournament on a warm early-summer day, Ryan Beauregard gushed with excitement about the upcoming WPT World Championship. Poker is alive and as well as ever in Vegas — and all around the world — and Wynn’s partnership with the World Poker Tour for this massive event will undoubtedly help the sport thrive even more.

“Poker is in full swing,” Beauregard said from his office at Wynn. “And I think there’s a bit of a pendulum swing here — tournaments are becoming much more popular. This just made sense for us.”

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Starting on December 1, the 20-day poker experience will feature at least two dozen tournaments — culminating in a main tournament with a guarantee of a whopping $15 million, the first of its kind. Wynn and WPT have conceptualized a poker tournament that’s more than just poker — it’s more like a festival, as Beauregard put it — at the most wonderful time of the year.

“We want to bring in players from all over the world,” he explained. “With the World Poker Tour’s global reach, this was a great event for us to partner on with them. Between both brands — Wynn and the World Poker Tour being so strong and having such reach — it made sense, and that’s what gave us the confidence to move forward with such a big guarantee.”

It’s an ambitious guarantee, to be sure. The $15 million is the largest guaranteed prize pool in the history of live tournament poker. Players will buy into the $10,400 main event, or qualify for the event through satellites, both online and at live venues around the world.

💰 $15 Million Guaranteed 💵 $10,400 Buy-in 📅 December 12 - 20 🏨 @WynnPoker 🔗- Full details: https://t.co/xModZ1bzQl

— World Poker Tour (@WPT) June 6, 2022 “With WPT’s global reach,” Beauregard explained, “they’re going to bring several hundred online qualifiers through ClubWPT and WPT Global as well as from other partners around the world. Add to that 300-400 live satellite qualifiers and we’re looking at an event that has 500 or 600 players that satellite their way into a $10,400 event. That’s fairly unique, and that’s what gives us the confidence to hit that $15 million guarantee.”

Beauregard affirms what anyone familiar with poker is feeling right now: that poker tournaments are beginning to once again rise in popularity. Wynn Las Vegas, and the poker world as a whole, have been flourishing.

“Ever since coming out of the pandemic, we have seen tremendous growth in our poker tournaments,” Beauregard noted. “Vegas has been a hotbed of activity, we’ve been setting records with our events. We brought our Wynn Millions back, two years back-to-back — with a $10 million guarantee — and we’ve had great success reaching that prize pool. That $15 million just seemed like the next step in the growth and evolution of our events.”

The events will operate out of Wynn’s Encore Ballroom, and feature approximately 120 tables. Beauregard expects the televised events, including the final tables, to draw the largest crowds. And growth could be immediate with a festival of this magnitude.

Wynn Las Vegas “In 10 years, I hope we have moved to a bigger space. Of course, that could happen in two years!”

An Opportunity For All

One of the many exciting facets of this tournament is its global inclusivity — basically anyone on the planet with an interest in poker can qualify to play. Whereas opportunities to win millions of dollars in tournaments used to be solely reserved for pros, now anyone with a chip and a chair can make their way to winning seven figures.

“In our eyes, this is really going to be a tournament that’s not just for the stereotypical professionals,” Beauregard explained. “While they will certainly attend, this is a tournament that’s also for casual amateurs and recreational players due to the global satellite program. Hopefully we get the word out enough and it’s a can’t miss for everyone who loves the game.”

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Considering the “open” nature of this event, it’s easy to draw analogies to the world of outdoor sports, like another game continually rising in popularity: golf. It’s also impossible to avoid comparing an event of this sheer size to the historic World Series of Poker Main Event, the most popular Hold’em event ever. I asked Beauregard: “If the WSOP Main Event is the Masters, which golf tournaments would best equate to the WPT Championship?”

Luckily for us, he’s an avid golfer.

“It’s definitely a combination of the US Open and the Open Championship,” answered Beauregard, “simply because it’s available to everybody and it’s truly going to be a global event. But I’ll take it down a notch and say that it’s actually more like the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro/Am, because this is going to bring in the best players, and through the satellite qualifiers, it’s also going to bring in hundreds of amateurs. And that’s what’s going to make it really special. There’s going to be a great mix — everybody has an opportunity to play.”

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All said, the festival will feature over 24 poker tournaments. That includes the WPT Prime Event, which will precede the $10,400 World Championship event. The Prime Event is a $1,100 buy-in with a $2 million guarantee that Beauregard estimates may draw 4,000 players and a $4 million prize pool.

“So even for those who can’t satellite in or get into the $10K, that Prime Event is going to be huge. And that also carries with it the televised final table — so it’s a rare opportunity for a player. To be able to play a WPT event that’s going to be televised is exciting, as generally the televised episodes are reserved for events with a buy-in larger than $3,000 or $5,000.”

The 20-day festival will feature a lot more than just Hold’em. WPT and Wynn are planning a HORSE championship, an Omaha 8 or Better championship, and other poker variants. They even have a tag team event in the works for the final day: a two-person tag-team tournament that will double as the festival’s wrap party.

“It’s a very popular, really fun, social event that people love to play, and we’re going to put our own twist on it,” said Beauregard. “ We want that tournament to be a lot of fun, generate a lot of excitement, and really build the social aspect of our community which poker players are really good at.”

Tournament poker picking up steam

The question many poker players and fans of the sport always seem to pose: will poker get back to the level of popularity it reached in the early 2000s?

“I think that we’re very close to being there,” Beauregard said. “The thing that earmarked the heyday of poker was so many television shows. What WPT is doing here — televising the two big events, which will result in about ten episodes of TV for WPT — will showcase the World Championship and Wynn.”

And while poker can be played just about everywhere these days, there’s still no place like Las Vegas for true big-tournament poker.

“Everybody can find cash games — there’s poker rooms all over the nation — but if people really want the biggest and best tournament experience, Vegas is second to none. Besides Wynn Las Vegas, there’s nowhere else where you’re going to find $10 and $15 million guarantees, or the player base to generate these prize pools. You can enter a $500 or $600 satellite, or even the WPT Prime for $1,100, and have a shot at winning a half a million or a million dollars. That’s the enticing part. That poker boom is happening right now.”

Families of players can enjoy the festivities, too. Beauregard explained that WPT and Wynn are planning different events and opportunities for significant others, family members, and friends who want to tag along to the event.

“A lot of the time, these significant others get left on the sidelines while the person they’re with is playing. We’re hoping to plan some off-the-felt activities, nightly events, and other experiences. It’s still early in the planning, but the goal is to create a true festival where there’s a little more that brings people together than just poker tournaments.”

Keep your eyes peeled for the full schedule of the WPT Championship tournament, which Beauregard says should be coming soon. You can find more information at WPT.com, and stay tuned for more satellites and qualifiers on WPT’s ClubWPT and WPT Global. You can also make hotel accommodations at WynnLasVegas.com or at WPT.com.

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