When the idea of a special $1 million buy-in tournament (with some proceeds going to the OneDrop Charity, precisely $111,111 from every entry) during the 2012 WSOP was first announced during the World Series of Poker, many eyebrows were raised. Even more eyebrows went up when WSOP officials stated that IF the tournament attracted 22 or more players (the number of entrants in the 1976 WSOP Main Event) they would turn it into a bracelet event with a special Platinum WSOP Bracelet created.

Well on Monday news came down that the tournament already has 22 confirmed participants, 15 of those 22 players were nice enough to let their names be revealed to the public at this time –the other seven wish to remain anonymous at this time:

* Guy Laliberté

* Bobby Baldwin

* Phil Ruffin

* Andy Beal

* Patrik Antonius

* Gus Hansen

* Daniel Negreanu

* Johnny Chan

* Tom Dwan

* Tony Guoga

* Jonathan Duhamel

* Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier

* Sean O’Donnell

* Dan Shak

So it looks like the 2012 WSOP will have some serious buzz around it (and I wouldn’t be surprised to see attendance increase to up to the cap of 48 players considering the lineup has a few “soft” spots in it, which may attract some tournament sharks who may need a little backing to play in such an event. This would put the total prize-pool at over $40 million!!! First-place could very well end up being more than the WSOP Main Event.

Related posts:

1. 2012 tournament year ready to kick-off Thursday There hasn’t been a major live poker tournament since before the Christmas weekend, when the World Poker Tour wrapped-up their 2011 schedule with the WPT...
2. Macau looks to host $100 million poker tournament According to unverified reports swirling around the Internet, a group of Chinese businessmen is looking to put together a small poker tournament in the gambling...

Tags: Andy Beal, Baldwin, Bertrand, Dan Shak, Daniel Negreanu, ElkY, Eyebrows, Gus, Gus Hansen, Johnny Chan, Monday News, patrik antonius, Phil Ruffin, Prize Pool, Sharks, Tom Dwan, Tony Guoga, world series, World Series of Poker, WSOP Main Event

This entry was posted on Monday, December 5th, 2011 at 8:32 pm and is filed under High Stakes Poker News, WSOP News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.