Are there too many WSOP bracelets?

With 178 bracelets awarded by the end of the year, have they stopped being the be-all-end-all title in poker?

This week GGPoker announced their online World Series of Poker schedule, not long after the schedule for the WSOPE and WSOP Paradise were announced, just after a record-breaking WSOP in Vegas. 

33 bracelets will be awarded at GGPoker, 15 at the WSOPE, 15 at WSOP Paradise and 115 were awarded in Vegas (including online). By my count, by the end of the year, there will have been 2,165 bracelets awarded in total since 1970. Of those bracelets, 489 were awarded before the poker boom, the rest after it. 

By contrast, by the end of 2023, there have been 147 EPT champions and 356 WPT champions, since both those tours were created.  

Is that too many bracelets? It feels like that is perhaps too many bracelets. 

7 months of bracelets?

Every few years we have this discussion. It is usually after more online events are added, or a bracelet will be contested with a very small or very large buy-in (both of which are said to cheapen the legacy of the bracelet, either for being not exclusive enough or too exclusive). I usually end up making the point that as long as we still rave about them, the bracelet will always be the most coveted prize in poker, regardless of how many there are. 

This is the first time I have felt that we might actually start to see the prestige removed a little from the bracelet and people choosing not to play for them. Not because of this online series, I am actually a big fan of that and I am looking forward to playing some satellites for it. Most poker is online, it stands to reason to me there should be online bracelets. I actually think an online bracelet has more gravitas than live bracelets in formats that only get played at the WSOP. 

It appears with the launch of WSOP Paradise and the growing partnership with GGPoker that the series is becoming a year-long thing. This year bracelets have been winnable every month between May and December. How long until the void in January to April is filled with them too? 

Forcing the players to choose

As I have previously written I have mixed feelings about WSOP Paradise purposely clashing with the WPT World Championship and EPT Prague. I think it is good for poker in the sense it will force PokerStars and the WPT to try even harder to compete, but it also forces poker players to choose between two events they would have loved to have played both of. 

Forcing the players to choose between bracelets or WPT/EPT titles might not work out well for the WSOP. It might remove the allure of the bracelet for future tours/online series. I think we are a long way off the Vegas series ever being in danger of competition, but players might be more selective about which bracelet events they play. 

None of this is to lambast GGPoker and the WSOP for doing what they are doing. If I were in their position I would be trying to grow the brand in the exact same way, making bracelets a year-round thing, live and online. Why should they just sit dormant for nine months when they have such a good brand?  

We just might, however, be witnessing the end of the bracelet event being the be-all-end-all title in poker. 

Are there too many bracelets? Let us know in the comments: