2017 WSOP Update: Colossus Turnout and This Week’s Events

The 2017 World Series of Poker is in full swing with the employee event out of the way and several other events finishing up, with more to come on the full schdule. One of the popular WSOP events to kick off this past week was the Colossus tournament. This monster tournament has a buy-in of $565 and is usually pretty popular among competitors. For this year, the event saw a much smaller turnout, with only just over 18,000 competing. When compared to last year, the event had a decrease of over 3,000 players.

The event was set to have an $8 million guaranteed prize pool, so despite a lower turnout then last year, the field still generated more than $9 million in prize pool monies. The total up for grabs is $9,026,500 with the winner earning $1 million.

Colossuss II had six starting flights taking place over three days. The event will continue today with Ardavan Yazdi holding the chip lead at 588,000. Not far behind is Thomas Boivin with 538,000 and Harry Arutyunyan with 504,000.

Day 2 will be back in action today at 2:00 pm local time with game play lasting 10 levels and blinds increasing every 60 minutes. Every two levels will signal a break with a dinner break on the schedule once the sixth level has completed for the day. Day 3 will kick off at the same time tomorrow with Day 4 set for Wednesday also beginning at 2:00 pm with the winner decided on this day.

For last year’s Colossus event, Ben Keeline earned the first place win, outlasting the field of 21,613 players to earn $1 million and his first gold bracelet.

Today, the WSOP continues with the start of Event #10, the $1,000 Tag Team No Limit Hold’em tournament as well as Event #11, the $1,500 Dealers Choice 6-Handed tournament. Tomorrow will see the beginning of Event #12, the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament along with Event #13, the $1,500 No Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw event.