Summer poker tournaments in Las Vegas generate nearly a quarter-billion dollars worth of prize money, Pokerati data crunchers have found. (Thanks Thea in the Philippines!)

It really is about more than just the World Series. Sure the tournament brand proudly owned by Caesars Interactive may have started it all, but now you’ve got Venetian Deep Stacks, the Wynn Classic, Binion’s Classic, Aria Classic, Rio Deep Stacks, Caesars Megastacks, Bellagio Cup … the list goes on … but all are competing for players, and apparently all you need is a casino property and a poker cliche … and maybe 110-degree weather outside, and voila — tournament success awaits!

LOLs notwithstanding, to better understand the impact of live events on the poker economy, and to assess the scope of WSOP and non-WSOP summertime Vegas action, we looked at 13 different series(es?) held at 10 different casino properties from mid-May through mid July … accounting for 722 tournaments total, nearly 230,000 entries (not to be confused with number of players) … making for more than 1,000 tournament days (whoa, that’s a lotta staff somebody’s gotta manage) in just one city.

And upon looking a little deeper (scroll horizontally) we found how:

• Caesars clearly dominates across low, middle, and high stakes tournament levels — with the 312 tournaments they operate accounting for 43 percent of the action we looked at, but 88 percent of the available prize pools
• Bellagio tourneys may be in a different league of high-dollar play, but even with WPT-branded events, total prize pools under MGM Resorts’ umbrella tally a relatively paltry $10 million
• Venetian held 212 tournaments, with some 32,000 entries generating about $14 million in prize money (after raking about 14 percent)
• With an average buy-in of $185, Rio Deepstacks accounted for 70,000 tournament entries, and $12 million in prize money
• The Hollywood Poker Open was notable, but probably also an outlier; still, might this one-off just before the WSOP main event reveal a possible a soft spot in the tournament economy at the $2,500 level in late June?

More…

Day 7 Table Draw

Theo Jorgensen will lead the remaining 78 players of the WSOP Main Event when play resumes at the Amazon room shortly after 12pm today. Jorgensen starts the day with 9,300,000 in chips followed by Michael Mizrachi with 7,535,000 and John Racener with 7,200,000 with play starting today on level 26, 25,000/50,000 blinds with a 5,000 ante. Play will continue until 27 players remain, then return Saturday to play down to the November Nine.

Other notables returning today:

William Thorson – 6,525,000
Alexander Kostritsyn – 5,715,000
Matt Affleck – 5,315,000
Bryn Kenney – 3,830,000
Eric Baldwin – 2,135,000
Johnny Lodden – 2,105,000
Adam Levy – 1,685,000
David Baker – 1,635,000
Tony Dunst – 1,550,000
David Baker – 1,540,000
Hasan Habib – 1,165,000
Scott Clements – 1,085,000
Jean-Robert Bellande – 700,000
Peter Jetten – 675,000

Notable eliminations from last report:
Juha Helppi
Todd Witteles
Fokke Beukers
Christian Harder

Full results here, and follow the updates over at wsop.com.

Bellagio Cup VI results

Moritz Kranich, a previous winner on the European Poker Tour, added a WPT title by defeating Justin “Boosted J” Smith heads-up to win the Bellagio Cup VI Main Event for $875,150. Smith earned $594,755 for the runner-up finish, with Phil Ivey finishing third for $363,650. Full results can be found here.

Day 6 table draw

Day 6 of the Main Event resumes at 12pm with 205 players remaining with Canadian Evan Lamprea leading the field with 3,564,000 in chips. Other notables looking to overtake Lamprea:

Notable stacks

Bryn Kenney – 2,902,000
Johnny Chan – 2,559,000
Fokke Beukers – 2,273,000
John Racener – 2,270,000
Michael Mizrachi – 1,793,000
Johnny Lodden – 1,625,000
Scott Clements – 1,535,000
JP Kelly – 1,474,000
Christian Harder – 1,263,000
Adam “Roothlus” Levy – 1,147,000
Phil Galfond – 1,025,000
Jean-Robert Bellande – 946,000
Breeze Zuckerman (last woman standing) – 738,000

Late night eliminations

Scotty Nguyen
Shawn Rice
Zachary Clark
Praz Bansi
Dash Dudley

Full results so far here, follow the action at wsop.com.

Ivey at Bellagio Cup VI final table

While the WSOP is expected to have less than 100 players remaining today, the focus of the poker community may be more focused on Phil Ivey making a record 9th WPT final table, as the Bellagio Cup VI final table was finally established after a lengthy day 4. When play resumes Thursday afternoon, here’s how they’ll be seated:

Seat 1: Phil Ivey – 1,595,000
Seat 2: Justin Smith – 2,100,000
Seat 3: Rob Akery – 1,980,000
Seat 4: Eric Afriat – 620,000
Seat 5: Moritz Kranich – 2,715,000
Seat 6: John Caridad – 5,120,000

Follow live updates over at the WPT site here.

Sunday is a day off for the remaining players in the Main Event, with only the media event scheduled at the WSOP.

Day 2b eliminations

Day 2b got underway Saturday afternoon with Bruce Buffer, who finished with 160,000 in chips, offering the command to shuffle up and deal to the 2,700+ hopefuls at the Rio with varying chances of making it to Monday’s Day 3. Some of the notable names who won’t be returning include Phil Ivey, Todd and Doyle Brunson, Darvin Moon, Andy Bloch, Josh Arieh, Roy Winston, Orel Hershiser, Shannon Elizabeth, Sam Simon, John Phan, John Duthie, Chris Ferguson, and Team Pokerati/Loudmouth Poker sponsored pro Tom Schneider.

Day 2b survivors

After four levels of play, concluding in the middle of level nine, the unofficial chip leader is David Assouline from Canada with 387,800.
Notables also returning Monday include Vanessa Selbst (265,000), Archie Karas (242,700), Dan Bilzerian (216,600), Phil Galfond (195,400), Jason Mercier (186,300), Karina Jett (170,000), Eric Buchman (134,200) and Dan Harrington (114,500). The full list of the over 2,500 players returning to day 3 are available here, while the Day 3 table draw is now available.

WPT Bellagio Cup VI starts today

Saturday, the WPT held a press conference announcing various changes for the ninth season, with their first event in the US at the Bellagio starting today, Bellagio Cup VI. In a last-minute scheduling change, late registration is now available until Tuesday afternoon, with four 90-minute levels Sunday and Monday. Here’s an interview RawVegas.tv had with CEO Steve Heller and Kimberly Lansing:

Watch WPT CEO Steve Heller Comments on Recent Changes to the WPT on RawVegas.tv

UPDATE: Late registration for Bellagio Cup VI will now be open until the start of level 12 on Tuesday. Sunday and Monday will be five levels each day.

Wow, so much big action going on today. I really can’t think of a comprehensive way to follow it without tuning in to a lively collection of poker-player twitter feeds.

Obviously it’s Day 6 of the WSOP main event … and we’re all starting to wonder just how deep @DonkeyBomber and several others (Peter Eastgate, Dennis Phillips, Joe Sebok, Phil Ivey, Elky, David Benyamine) can go. Click here to follow the live updates on WSOP.com.

NOTE: Tom is playing at the ESPN featured table with Prahlad Friedman. I told him he didn’t have to wear his patch until Day 7. Oops? What I didn’t take into account (via Pauly):

Another huge table? Jordan Morgan drew Phil Ivey and David Benyamine’s table. All are top pros but very quiet players who rarely speak at the tables. I guess that’s why they’re not on the featured TV table.

And then down the hall in the Brasilia room, @taopauly and I are looking to take down the WSOP Dream Team Poker team title and then some.

Today is also the start of the Venetian Deep Stacks main event — a $5k that looks to have lots of WSOP main event bustouts in the field. And Team Pokerati will have its representative in @Tbonezz111. It’s the biggest event Troy’s ever played in; he got in on a $130 satellite to a mega-satellite … so should be fun to see if he can make a run for the bubble and then some.

Lastly, the $15k Bellagio Cup V main event starts today. Should be interesting to see who plays (and who doesn’t, opting instead for the Venetian action). You can follow those updates at WorldPokerTour.com.

Wheee! Great way to start the week … and bring the big poker summer to a close.

The World Poker Tour kicked off its seventh season with the Bellagio Cup at Bellagio (go figure). The powers-that-be raised the buy-in to $15K in the hopes of getting a field of pros, and that’s what happened. A total of 446 players anted up to create a prize pool of $6,489,300 with a whopping $1,673,700 first prize. (The prize money was not given away in a cup, which would have been a creative idea, right? C’mon, guys. A WPT bracelet and a Bellagio Cup bracelet? A gold cup – use your imagination!)

Anyway, the final table looked promising… Several pros made it, and it looked like David Benyamine was going to take it down and add two bracelets (ugh) to the WSOP bracelet he won this year. But 24-year old online pro Mike “SirWatts” Watson’s luck skillful play got in the way, and a brand new name was added to the list of WPT millionaires. The action will be shown – dates unknown – on Fox Sports.

The final table results were as follows:

1st: Mike “SirWatts” Watson – $1,673,770
2nd: David Benyamine – $840,295
3rd: Luke Staudenmaier – $452,465
4th: Ralph Perry – $290,900
5th: John “The Razor” Phan – $193,915
6th: Gabe Thaler – $129,275

Next stop on the World Poker Tour: The Bike in Los Angeles at the end of August.

Michael Binger said she was due … and sure enough, Clonie Gowen got it good — not at the WSOP, but across I-15 at the Bellagio Cup IV, in a $5,000 NLH event that drew 235 runners.

Kinda like a high-stakes second-chance tourney for early main-event busters and pros callously accused of being in a drug-addled downward spiral. Her payday for winning: $437,775

Awesome. Congrats, Clonie! I knew you had it in you, regardless of your status with Full Tilt … Seriously, we should be like best friends again and hang out all the time.

You, too, can own a piece of the World Poker Tour. Maybe by tomorrow, shares will be on sale at the 99 Cent Store.

The stock price for WPT Enterprises, Inc. (WPTE on NASDAQ) hit $1.00. I’m not kidding.

While some people are buying it up in the hopes that someone will throw Lipscomb a life raft, word is that the WPTE employees are handing out resumes faster than players can buy in to a $1500 NLHE event at the WSOP. Even so, the World Poker Tour is still planning to hit Vegas for the Bellagio Cup in a few weeks to film the first episode of Season VII. Could be an interesting vibe over there!