Today marks the start of the 2010 World Series of Poker, and the two tournaments slated for action are the highest and lowest buy-ins of the entire 57 tournament series.

At the low end of the scale is the $500 buy-in Casino Employees Event, an event that has been a WSOP staple for years. The event is limited to Las Vegas casino employees, but some of the bigger name tournament directors and card-room managers have been known to take part in the event. The event has also been the catalyst of one notable poker player’s career; Thang Luu. Following his win in the Casino Employees event, Luu has gone on to win two bracelets, and has dominated the Omaha 8 events at the WSOP over the past few years.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is the reformatted $50k buy-in Players Championship. The format for the $50k tournament has been changed this year from HORSE to an 8-Game Mix that will feature a final table of strictly No Limit Holdem –the change was made to help the event’s TV exposure as it was dropped from last year’s WSOP lineup on ESPN, along with all non-Holdem tournaments, which created a dramatic decrease in participation.

The tournament’s winner will still receive the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy, named for the late Chip Reese who won the inaugural $50k buy-in HORSE tournament in 2006.

Tags: WSOP

This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 4:13 pm 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.