BREAKING NEWS - 2010 WSOP Schedule Set , No $50K HORSE Event

The WSOP has announced next year's (2010) WSOP schedule.  There are several changes from previous years.

The biggest change may be the elimination of the $50K HORSE event.  It will be replaced with a $50K 8-Game Mixed Event called:  "The Player's Championship".  This will be Event #2 - a 5-day event beginning on May 28.  The game will consist of: Limit Hold'em, OH8, Razz,  Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud H/L, No-Limit Hold'em,  Pot-Limit Omaha, and 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball.  The final table will be solely No-Limit Hold'em - and, likely, televised by ESPN. For HORSE purists there will be the usual $1,500 and $3K events along with a new $10K Championship event.

The "stimulus" $1000 tournament idea is back and expanded. Does that mean the economy is in even worse shape???  There will be 4 - $1000 bracelet events in 2010 (and the Ladies and Seniors tournies are also at that level).  A little more opportunity for those of us who don't have the really big bucks to put down on a tournament.

One other tweak is the "big" NL Hold'em event.  Last year they ran a $40K event for the 40th Anniversary of the WSOP and noted that it wouldn't be a recurring event.  Well, Harrah's stuck to their word - 2010's WSOP Event #52 will be a $25K NL Hold'em (six handed) affair.

The full series of tournaments will consist of 57 events again (plus the Ante Up for Africa Charity event) and run from May 28 to July 17 (the final table - with that played out sometime in November).  You can see the full schedule of events here.

WSOP Main Event

Congratulations (we suppose) to Joe Cada for taking down the WSOP Main Event. We at the CPL believe it's his high water mark (even though he's now the youngest champ ever at 21) and that we'll not hear much more from him over the next 50 years.

However, it's a good time to revisit our series on the "Best Damn WSOP Main Event Players in the 2000s". This link here is our final "redux" entry but is has additional links to the other several posts on the topic.

Site Numbers and "Thank You" Norman Chad

The site numbers are in for Aug 16 to Sept 16. We're down a smidge on visits at 419 (down from 428 last month), but up in city visits (up from 99 to 115) and in countries (22 to 24) - both of those (we believe are new records for us). Same standard top four - Circle Pines moves into 5th place and Fargo, ND readership moves from 8th to 6th (and looks like it'll be 5th for the next reporting time frame). Here's the site map many of you love:
Speaking of records - CPLPoker wants to say "Thank you" to ESPN's WSOP commentator Norman Chad. In June we congratulated Norman on his first ever WSOP cash - a Stud8 event (#53) and opined that we hoped we'd hear some reporting on it.

Well, on Tuesday's Main Event episodes on ESPN they went hog wild in mentioning it (mostly cryptically). Obtusely enough that dozens of people are going to the internet to find out about it - and landing on our pages. Since Tuesday, at least 50 search referrals have come in with variations of "Norman Chad cashing WSOP". On Tuesday, we reached a new record of unique visitors (not visits) with 22 - that was surpassed on Wednesday with 26 unique visitors. We didn't break the daily visits record and the interest (while still there today) seems to be fading - but, we wanted to add a "Thank you, Norman" - in addition to "Congratualations."

Bill "Comeback Kid" Lanoux - WSOP Bound!!

Our very own Bill Lanoux has won a trip to the WSOP and entry into (we believe) event #2 - $1500 No-Limit Hold em.

Co-Director Phil Fuehrer "discovered" the Comeback Kid playing in a bar poker league run by Chippy Poker and invited him to join the CPL. Bill agreed and the CPL has, obviously, done him wonders. He recently finished 4th in our own TOC and has followed that up by besting about 150 bar league opponents to win this roughly-valued $2500 prize.

His prize is for two people - the question now is whether he'll be taking his significant other or Phil to Vegas.

Stay tuned for more on this one folks......and congrats to Bill!!!!