Will World Series of Poker Europe Be Another Record Breaker?

by Roy Brindley, 30 September 2024

This week, the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event, a tournament with a guaranteed €5 million prize pool, will draw some of the world’s finest poker players to King’s Resort in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. Will the fifteenth edition of the annual Texas Hold’em competition be a record breaker, or will it fall short of its €5 million guarantee?

King’s Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic, will hope to more than cover its €5 million WSOPE guarantee this week. ©KingsCasino

In 2023, Max Neugebauer, a former professional basketball player from Austria, outlasted a record 817-player field to land the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event (WSOPE). His prize was €1.5 million. The inaugural WSOPE featured 362 players and was won by 18-year-old Annette Obrestad. The Norwegian remains the youngest person ever to win a WSOP bracelet.

WSOPE 2024: Big or the Biggest?

The WSOPE festival, featuring 15 World Series Bracelet events, began on September 18th with a €1 million guaranteed €350 entry Texas Hold’em tournament. The competition, won by little-known English player Przemyslaw Szymanski, surpassed its guarantee by €39,014. However, some subsequent events have narrowly failed to reach organisers’ expectations and have featured an overlay.

The 2024 WSOPE Main Event has a €5 million guaranteed purse. In 2023, the competition generated a prize pool of €7,761,500. It was the biggest purse in the competition’s history, and it has seen a steady increase in participants since 2017 – the year the tournament moved to the Czech Republic following spells in London, Cannes, France, and Berlin, Germany.

Previous World Series of Poker Europe Winners

The 2024 WSOPE has faced stiff competition from online poker site PokerStars. It started its 379 tournament World Championship of Online Poker on September 8th. Offering $80 million in guaranteed prize money, the PokerStars WCOOP series has three main events demanding $109, $1,050 and $10,300 entry. Combined, they carry $11 million in prize-pool guarantees.

€5 Million Vegas Freeroll to Combat WSOP in Paradise

Clashes are not uncommon on the poker calendar, and these are rarely coincidental. When the World Series of Poker announced a $50 million guarantee for its WSOP Paradise Main Event (taking place this December in the Bahamas), it was clear the World Poker Tour would probably suffer.

In 2023, the WPT placed a €40 million guarantee on the World Poker Championship’s $10,400 main event and was left with a massive hole in its balance sheet when the tournament failed to meet its guarantee by $2,417,000. However, the $1,100 buy-in WPT Prime Championship tournament at the same event did attract an astonishing 10,512 players to more than double its $5 million guarantee.

In a move apparently designed to soften the blow created by two major operators hosting valuable tournaments at the same time, the World Poker Tour has declared it will stage a $5 million freeroll with a $1 million first prize at the Las Vegas Wynn, during the World Poker Tour Championship. It will take place between December 13 and 15, the eve of the $10,400 WPT World Championship, meaning it will directly clash with the WSOP Paradise Main Event.