The 2024 World Series of Poker is almost upon us. With 99 live bracelet events, a bumper WSOP Online event schedule and all the drama of the $25k Fantasy Draft and Player of the Year races to come, Las Vegas is the place to be. If you’re heading to Sin City in search of WSOP bracelet gold, then you’ll want to be prepared. In the first two articles looking at how you can make the most of your trip to the gambling capital of the world, we’ll look at how you can protect your bankroll, pursue those bracelets and spread the cost and invest in others to back winners whether you’re at the felt or not.
How to Build or Defend Your Bankroll
When the WSOP announced a bumper 99-event WSOP 2024 Schedule of Events, they came up with events for everyone. From events that cost just $300, $400 or $500 and appeal to the ‘weekend warriors’ right the way up to the $50,000 Poker Players Championship and six-figure Super High Roller events that will welcome elite players only, the WSOP has something for everyone.
Protecting your bankroll is something each individual player has a responsibility to do but that doesn’t mean you have to do it on your own. Often, spreading the cost of your entries is a strong way to reduce variance and release any pressure you put yourself under. Selling your action to family and friends in Vegas to root you on is +EV for the emotional feelgood factor, while swapping with other players you rate in similar events can give you a vicarious sweat and lead to much less pain if you are busted when you can still cheer them on.
Finally, if you’re selling action, then there’s no better place to do it that PokerStake. With players such as six-time WSOP event winner and Poker Hall of Famer Daniel Negreanu, the reigning WSOP world champion Daniel Weinman, the Global Poker Index Female Player of the Year Cherish Andrews and dozens of the most in-form players in the world all part of the PokerStake stable, selling your WSOP action to fans couldn’t be easier. Head to the site, sign up now and enjoying selling WSOP with no fees!
Bag a WSOP Bracelet
Playing in WSOP bracelet events is a special kind of exciting. Some of the very best players in the poker profession have never won WSOP gold so if you capture a bracelet yourself, you’re joining an exclusive club. If you’ve put together a WSOP bankroll, then protect it by keeping a ledger of your profits and losses. Protecting your bankroll might mean either having less of yourself in events later in the schedule or putting some of your profits by so that when you leave Las Vegas in mid-July, you’re doing so with some funds to put back into your regular roll.
Playing a WSOP bracelet event is an enormously exciting thing to do if you’ve never done it before. If it’s your first time, then having like-minded players around you can be vitally important to your chances. Morale is everything in Las Vegas. It can be sucked out of you by the sheer length and scale of the World Series, so stay mindful of this and take the most pleasure from the journey.
It is extremely unlikely that you’ll win a bracelet when hundreds of thousands of players will enter events and only 99 will claim gold and hear their national anthem played over the PA System at the Horseshoe Las Vegas. If you run deep in events but fall late, remember to congratulate yourself on getting so far. If you bust early, take the time to enjoy Las Vegas and root for friends, it will maintain your morale.
Should you make it as far as the Thunderdome at the Horseshoe and a live-streamed WSOP final table, simply make the most of every moment and soak in the atmopshere. Even for stars of the format such as Phil Hellmuth, Josh Arieh or Shaun Deeb, each final table is a treasured memory.
Push for the win but enjoy every moment at the felt.
Back Yourself – and Others! – to Win
Playing a WSOP bracelet event is an enormously exciting thing to do if you’ve never done it before. If it’s your first time, then having like-minded players around you can be vitally important to your chances. Morale is everything in Las Vegas. It can be sucked out of you by the sheer length and scale of the World Series, so stay mindful of this and take the most pleasure from the journey.
It is extremely unlikely that you’ll win a bracelet when hundreds of thousands of players will enter events and only 99 will claim gold and hear their national anthem played over the PA System at the Horseshoe Las Vegas. If you run deep in events but fall late, remember to congratulate yourself on getting so far. If you bust early, take the time to enjoy Las Vegas and root for friends, it will maintain your morale.
Should you make it as far as the Thunderdome at the Horseshoe and a live-streamed WSOP final table, simply make the most of every moment and soak in the atmosphere. Even for stars of the format such as Phil Hellmuth, Josh Arieh or Shaun Deeb, each final table is a treasured memory. Push for the win but enjoy every moment at the felt.
When it comes to backing others or speaking with your own backers, always remember that honesty is the best policy. If you made a big error on the river, then lean into it, own your actions 100% while you’re in Las Vegas and the corrosive nature of losing in Sin City won’t affect you. If you’re backing other players, then back them, both financially and emotionally. Support them as if they were you and playing with another player’s dime. Having a positive attitude to backing in poker is crucial. No one likes to lose, but if you learn from any spot where you fall on the wrong side of a profitable decision in the long term, then you received a lesson from Las Vegas.
Over the years, some of the world’s best poker players had losing summers. Many professionals have told this reporter that they thought they’d never have a winning summer in Las Vegas before the time they did. That golden moment in the sun can be so much closer than you think if you keep believing, stick to the bankroll, backing and bracelet plans that you’ve made, and glory can be right around the corner.
Don’t believe us? Ask last year’s world champion, Daniel Weinman. After a fairly tough opening half of the series, he took time away and was thinking of staying away from the Main Event. Persuaded to fire again, he had great friends around him and eight days later was the biggest-ever winner of the Main Event, taking home an incredible $12.1 million.
Daniel Weinman’s story could be yours, but you need to stay positive, roll with the punches and remain in contention. Winning a bracelet seems impossible right up to the moment that you achieve it… then you just want to do it all over again.
One thing is for sure – dreams will be made in Las Vegas this summer… so why can’t they be yours?
