Earlier this year the World Series of Poker announced that the Big One for OneDrop million-dollar buy-in tournament had reached the 22 player threshold that was set to make the event a certified WSOP bracelet tournament. Now it appears the Big One for OneDrop is gaining even more traction as Oskar Garcia of the Associated Press is reporting that tournament organizers are saying that the tournament is up to 30 entrants, and will likely reach the 48-player cap.

Garcia is reporting that with 30 entrants the top-prize for the event will be $12.3 million, making it the largest first-place prize in the history of poker –Jamie Gold won the previous largest prize in poker at the 2006 WSOP when he won the Main Event. Should the tournament reach the 48-player cap the winner will pocket an $18.3 million payday.

Of the 30 players only about a dozen or so have had their names released to the public, and according to Garcia’s AP article, only 10 of the 30 entrants are professional poker players –which could attract a few other professional poker players who may see the “soft” field as a +EV event. Of course, the $1,000,000 buy-in is a major deterrent, but if a few up-and-coming players could get the right amount of backing, who knows what names might be added to the Big One for OneDrop tournament.

The tournament was conceived by Cirque de Soleil founder and poker aficionado Guy Laliberte, who devised the event to raise awareness and money for his charity OneDrop. OneDrop is dedicated to bringing clean drinking water to all parts of the globe. The OneDrop tournament will donate $111,111 from each player’s buy-in to the charity, and it’s likely that a number of the people who cash in the event will donate even more of their winnings to the charity.

The WSOP has embraced the event –as I stated above it has been made an official bracelet event—going so far as to design a special Platinum WSOP Bracelet for the tournament. The tournament is set to kick-off on July 1, 2012 and is scheduled for three days, with 10 one-hour levels scheduled for each day. Each player will begin with 3,000,000 chips (500 Big Blinds) with blinds at 3,000/6,000 and a 1,000 chip ante.

Here is the current list of known entrants for the event:

* 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

* Erik Seidel

For more information on the Big One for OneDrop $1,000,000 tournament you can head over to the www.wsop.com website.

Tags: Aficionado, Ap Article, charity, Cirque De Soleil, Clean Drinking Water, Guy Laliberte, History Of Poker, Jamie Gold, main event, Oskar, Parts Of The Globe, Platinum Bracelet, poker players, Professional Poker, Series Of Poker, Threshold, Tournament Organizers, world series, World Series of Poker, WSOP

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2012 at 8:50 am and is filed under Poker 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.