Updated on 22 Feb 26 by
Barry Carter
Poker Expert

WSOP 2019 will start with a rake free event

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the World Series of Poker and the first details about the festival have been announced.





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The Main Event will take place on July 3 and seven events have been announced so far. 

The big news this year is that, to celebrate the 50th anniversary, the opening event on May 30 is called Big 50. It is a $500 buy-in event with 50,000 chips, $5 million guaranteed and $1 million guaranteed to the winner

It will be a re-entry event and the first entry will be rake free, with any future re-entries raked at the normal rate. 

“We’re excited to commence our golden event,” said WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart. “We expect our opening weekend Big 50 event to be one of the largest in our history, and certainly one of the best value tournaments ever offered. This is part of our concerted plans to make the 2019 WSOP a better value all-around.”

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Highlight events so far

There is also a Gala Awards evening planned at this year's series. PokerGO once again have the broadcast rights for the Main Event. The full schedule will be announced next year.

Do you like the look of the schedule so far? Let us know in the comments:


Poker Expert

Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, Poker Satellite Strategy, PKO Poker Strategy, Endgame Poker Strategy, GTO Poker Simplified, Mystery Bounty Poker Strategy and Beyond GTO. In 2025, he won the Global Poker Awards for Best Book and Twitter Personality of the Year.