The 2025 World Series Of Poker Begins Today - 100 Events From Now Until Mid-July - Here's a Beginner's Guide To Everything There Is To Know

I love doing this blog. I get fired up for it. There aren't many things in this world that get me genuinely excited- The Washington Capitals. Jayden Daniels. And the World Series of Poker. And today the 2025 WSOP gets underway and I am jacked up for it. Jacked to the tits!

When most people think of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the first thing that comes to mind is the Main Event, the $10,000 buyin no limit hold’em tournament you will see on ESPN when you’re flipping the channels late at night. Everyone remembers watching Chris Moneymaker winning the Main Even back in the day. That's how I fell in love with poker and I haven't looked back since. 

Before I talk about this year's WSOP, let me go over some basics for those of you who may be unfamiliar with what exactly the WSOP is, and how tournament poker works.

One thing a lot of casual viewers don’t realize is the Main Event is the final event of a month and a half long series of poker tournaments, this year with a smooth 100 total tournaments in all, spanning every variation of poker, with buyins as low as $300 and as high as $250,000. 

The WSOP is held at the the Paris and Horseshoe hotels in Vegas, in multiple huge convention center rooms where they set up thousands of tables to handle all of the events, as seen below:

So what does it mean when you enter a poker tournament, as opposed to when you play in a cash game with your friends? When you decide to play a tournament, you pay the entry fee+ rake that goes to the casino and get X amount in tournament chips. The blinds progressively go up, and somewhere around the top 10% of the people who enter make the money. You have to accumulate chips as the blinds go up because once you lose all your chips, you’re done. Most WSOP events allow 1 re-entry.

What I love the most about the WSOP is anyone can enter. You pay your buy-in and can be seated at a table with amateurs and pros alike. Like if you went to play golf and were in a group with Tiger Woods, you could be randomly seated next to the likes of Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, or even Jake Toole.

And that’s what also makes these WSOP events so profitable for the pros…a ton of amateur players go to Vegas to take shots at the glory. They’ve seen Chris Moneymaker do it. They’ve seen Darvin Moon do it. I do it! So the question always is, “why not me?”. WSOP events are considered “soft” for that reason- lots of lesser-skilled players playing out of their comfort zones in tournaments with big prize pools. When so much money is up for grabs, it gets hard for the poorer, less experienced players to play their best.

If you're just getting back into poker recently and are wondering if it's still the same game as 2011…no…no it is not. Poker in 2011 is like the NBA before the 3 point shot. Like the NFL before the forward pass. The game now is much more "solved" by the pros. And these pros are unreal good- they spend so much time "in the lab" aka studying the game. There are now things called "solvers" which basically run sims to let you know the best thing to do with any given hand with any given chip count with any given flop/turn/river, etc. The best players in the world grind these solvers day and night to perfect their poker game, to get as close to playing GTO as possible.  

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Last year I cashed the Main Event for the first time, finishing 717th for $27,500. It was far from first place, but a great experience through and through.

I made the money and got to play on the TV table, both lifelong dreams of mine which were fulfilled.

This year I am playing 4 events in mid-June and then going back for the Main Event on July 5th.

I should say "potentially" 4 events in mid-June because hopefully I run up some stacks and make days 2/3 and am forced to skip events, but the schedule right now is:

13th - $1,500 MONSTER STACK - Flight C (1,500)

14th - $1,500 MONSTER STACK - Flight D (1,500)

15th - $500 SALUTE to Warriors - No-Limit Hold'em (2 bullets max, 1,000)

16th - $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em 6-Handed (2 bullets max, 6,000)

17th - $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Freezeout (1,500)

I am selling 30% of my action for those if you'd like a Summer sweat with me:

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I'm feeling good and love playing poker at the WSOP. I've made decent-ish runs in the past, so hopefully this is the year I go deep in something and hey who knows, maybe I'll even find myself at a final table.

Good luck to the grinders chasing their dream, to the amateurs taking their shot, and bad luck to the scumbags and cheaters in the poker world who ruin it for the rest of us! Can't wait to follow all the action, the drama, and the crazy hands.