Image courtesy of Rachel Kay Winter, PokerNews
This week, the news was all about putting on bracelets, especially if you were the Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew… but also as it pertained to poker.
As I’m sure you already know, the WSOP announced their much-anticipated summer schedule for 2026. GGPoker, the Overlords of Overlay, revealed the calendar on Monday, and there are, once again, a staggering 100 bracelet events.
Besides more tournaments, this year there will be more starting flights, more re-entries, more live streaming, and more money for Mori Askendari. Yeah, I know, Mori’s PokerGo and POKER PROductions aren’t producing the Series stream or broadcast for the first time in years, but no other name works for that joke. You get the idea… the house is going to make a lot of dough, or print, as the kids say.
Bracelet Missing Links
Several tournaments, like the $3000 6 Max Limit Hold’Em and the $1979 Hall of Famers Bounty, have gotten the axe. Sadly, the $1500 SHOOTOUT No Limit Hold’Em has also been sunset.
It was a great event in which you had to outlast your entire starting table in order to advance, and many people, including me, are wondering why the shootout had to face the firing squad. My guess: because a shootout doesn’t allow for multiple rebuys, it’s a less efficient money maker, so GGPoker left O.G. poker players with one less game.
The main reason I loved this format was that it reminded me of my previous favorite thing that the WSOP shit-canned, the single-table satellite section. This was the liveliest, most fun, and most profitable place to be, whether you were a weekend warrior or were grinding all summer. I was pretty good in a shootout because I played a lot of STSs.
As you probably recall, you could buy into 24/7 ten-handed games that were constantly starting for as little as $125 and up to $1080. All you had to do was beat the table to win lammers, so called because they were laminated chips only good for buying into other tournaments.
Typically, I would buy into a $275 STS. The prize, five lammers worth $500 each, and a $120 cash would go to the eventual winner unless there was a chop when it got down to heads-up or maybe three-handed.
There were also last-longer bets organized amongst the players. When you had everyone putting a hundred on the side, that was an extra thousand in the prize pool sans juice! I see you, EPT Paris.
Ultimately, the single table era ended because the IRS started wondering about the untaxed profit generated by players who won lammers and then sold them to other players under the table. I guess the revenuers didn’t want anyone lamming out on paying their fair share, or their unfair share for that matter (see Big Beautiful Bill, not attached here).
In the case of lammers, unlike the current gambling tax overreach, the feds may have had a point. The lammer market was a thriving independent economy (I’m told), with no connection to any bank or government. It was like owning bitcoin without having to listen to crypto bros.
My Memory Bank About Making Bank at the WSOP
My fondness for the STS, besides also being a great Cadillac from the 90s, probably dates to 2008. It was June, and I was working on a sitcom in L.A. (as you may know, sitcom is short for sit calmly and watch your dreams be destroyed), when the showrunner suddenly announced that we were taking the rest of the week off since enough of the staff had script assignments that they could start writing. I, however, did not yet have a script assignment!
I quickly checked the WSOP website and was soon on a Southwest flight out of Burbank to play in the $5,000 No Limit Hold’Em event that started the following day at noon. Of course, I wasn’t planning on plunking down 5K in cash to try and beat the best players in the world. I was going to satellite in.
Long story longer, I got to the Rio around 8 pm and played five or six sit-and-gos, chopping two and winning one outright. Around 4 a.m., I took my ten lammers and bought into the 5K, total price well under $2,000.
I bagged 166,000 after day one. We reached the money toward dinner time on day 2. At around 2 in the morning, my cell phone rang. It was my friend Yuri who had been following along online. I answered, “Final Table,” which we had just reached moments earlier.
The next day at 2 pm, with me in 8th chip position, I took my seat to the left of Scott Seiver, who, as the chip leader, had a stack in front of him the size of a birthday cake.
In the end, after Scott open-limped from the small blind, I looked down at AK and raised off my short stack. He called, and the flop brought a king. Check, bet, check raise, all-in, call. He had pocket aces, knocking me out in sixth place on his way to his first World Series bracelet.
6th paid $154,000.
All that to say, I’m excited about the Series this year, but somehow I miss the Rio.
Back to the Present
New this year at the WSOP is the $550 Mini Mystery Millions. There are currently some other mysteries, namely, when the Final Table of the Main Event is going to take place, and where we can watch it. Currently, there is no date given.
Opinions on the litter box formerly known as Twitter have ranged from concern that we will return to the November 9, to the theory that the WSOP is trying to make sure they won’t be competing for viewers with the semi-finals of the World Cup.
This just in: the WSOP will in no way be competing for viewers with the World Cup. World Cup Soccer is the most popular sporting event on the planet. Poker is fun to watch for some people, but more fun to play, especially when there’s a great football match showing on the telly. Apropos of nothing, I hate it when you’re playing poker, and they’re showing poker on TV. I feel like I’m in an Escher painting.
We have learned that there will be free live streaming every day on the WSOP YouTube channel of all tournaments except the Main Event. Will the Main be behind a paywall? No, according to a just-released interview with Daniel Negreanu.
I have heard rumblings about where it’s going to land, but I can’t confirm yet. I will say that my Kalshi wager promises a big payday if I’m right and the Final Table is only available at movie theaters on closed-circuit television like the Ali-Frazier fights of the 70s.
'It's not a November Nine'
— Poker Org (@pokerorg) February 21, 2026
Daniel @RealKidPoker Negreanu reveals more about the 2026 WSOP changes.
😲 Final table delay 'not what you think it is'
🆓 Main Event not behind paywall
✅ Multiple daily streams
Watch the full interview👇https://t.co/MAPJx3EC22
What Fresh Hellmuth Is This?
The other day Phil Hellmuth Jr. tweeted, “We’re in the middle of a poker boom right now.”
We are in the middle of a poker boom right now!
— phil_hellmuth (@phil_hellmuth) February 14, 2026
It started in 2020 when everyone was forced to stay home during the pandemic and “Found poker”: no nightclubs, no parties, not much social contact, why not play poker w your friends online? Or in person?
High schoolers and college… https://t.co/JFZUnK9dAF
He received a lot of pushback from casino cash game regs, and also from reality.
Sorry, but not true, as much as I'd like it to be.
— Todd Witteles (@ToddWitteles) February 17, 2026
WSOP does well because it has always been marketed so well.
But aside from that, all other tournament series are a fraction of once they once were, cash games are far less plentiful, and high stakes games are mostly private.
Cash games have dwindled as rake has ramped up, particularly here in Los Angeles, where an unscientific sampling of my home game found that playing cash at Commerce or The Bike is way down. Home games, some for very high stakes, have filled the gap for a lot of regs.
The nice thing about a home game, instead of sitting under the florescents at Hollywood Park, you’re playing in a nice family home. It’s not as nice when the family turns out to be the Gambinos, but you get what I’m saying.
The Steaming Hand of The Week….
The first entry into this recurring feature has to be a hand played at Commerce Casino’s LAPC right here in beautiful, sunny south Cal. On the first hand of the final table of the Commerce Classic, a million-dollar guaranteed tournament, Erick Ordonez opened with Q♠Q♥ and Duey Dong called in the small blind with K♣Q♣.
The flop was Q♦8♦9♦. Of course, money went in with the top set vs. the top pair second kicker. Then, on the turn, when a fourth diamond appeared, Dong led out with a donk bet. Ordonez called, and the river was dealt a fifth diamond for a flush on the board.
It went check, check. Ordonez showed his meaningless set of queens, and Dong mucked his hand face down. Had he turned his hand over, they would have chopped, but the pot was pushed to Ordonez. Controversy was immediately touched off there at the table and then on the vomitorium formerly known as Twitter.
Some players said that the cards should speak, and the chop should have happened, even though Dong made a mistake. Tournament Director Matt Savage weighed in that the result was correct since you have to show a hand to win, and cards can’t speak if they’re in the muck.
I feel bad for Dong, but he’ll be alright. Afterall, we’re in the middle of a poker boom.
Have a great week…
