Breaking: GGPoker WSOP Online Main Event Set with $20 Million Guarantee Breaking: GGPoker WSOP Online Main Event Set with $20 Million Guarantee

There will be $20 million guaranteed this year in GGPoker's international edition of the World Series of Poker 2021 Online Main Event, the operator has just revealed.

That is down $5 million from last year’s $25 million guarantee, but 2020 was a unique year in the poker world and beyond. It still guarantees that it will be at least the fourth largest online poker tournament ever held.

For the second year in a row, GGPoker is hosting an online, international version of the coveted WSOP Main Event. Last year, after the Covid-19 pandemic unexpectedly shut down the world, GGPoker stepped up to host a massive online WSOP festival that culminated in a record-setting Main Event.

To say 2020 was a success would be an understatement. While the series was not without its technical glitches at the beginning, hardly a surprise for such a new site suddenly hosting massive WSOP fields, by the end it was an unmitigated success.

GGPoker put a $25 million guarantee on the 2020 Online Main Event, then proceeded to smash that guarantee to put on the biggest online poker tournament to date with more than $27.5 million total in the prize pool.

It is no surprise that GGPoker decided to lower the guarantee this year, as the unique situation in 2020 no doubt contributed to the bloated numbers. A $20 million guarantee with barely a month to ramp up is still very ambitious indeed.

One of the Biggest Games Ever Hosted Online

Even with the the WSOP 2021 Online Main Event guarantee lowered to $20 million, the game is expected to be among the largest online poker tournaments ever run. The $20 million guarantee puts it on-par with second and third biggest online games ever, partypoker's MILLIONS Online from 2018 and 2019.

Both of those games had $20 million guaranteed pre-pandemic, and both hit the guarantees comfortably with more than $21 million in each event. Even in the unlikely event the game doesn’t make the $20 million guarantee, the guaranteed pool will still make it the fourth biggest online game ever.

Like last year, the buy-in for the tournament $5000. There will be multiple Day 1 phases, which will each be played as freezeouts.

Largest Online Poker Tournaments in History

Tournament Operator When Guarantee Prize Pool Buy-in Entrants
GG WSOP Main Event 2020 GGPoker August 2020 $25,000,000 $27,559,500 $5,000 5802
MILLIONS Online partypoker December 2018 $20,000,000 $21,835,000 $5,300 4367
MILLIONS Online partypoker December 2019 $20,000,000 $21,090,000 $10,300 2109
GG WSOP Main Event 2021 GGPoker August 2021 $20,000,000 ??? $5,000 ???
Sunday Million 14th Anniversary PokerStars March 2020 $12,500,000 $18,603,200 $215 93016
Sunday Million 15th Anniversary PokerStars March 2021 $12,500,000 $13,975,200 $215 69,876
Sunday Million 10th Birthday PokerStars December 2011 $10,000,000 $12,432,200 $215 62116
High Roller Championship GGPoker May 2020 $10,000,000 $12,372,500 $25,000 505
Sunday Million 13th Anniversary PokerStars April 2019 $10,000,000 $12,268,400 $215 61342
WCOOP Main Event PokerStars September 2010 $10,000,000 $12,215,000 $5,200 2443
Sunday Million 5th Anniversary PokerStars March 2011 $5,000,000 $11,825,600 $215 59128

Awaiting a Series Schedule

This announcement is still quite preliminary, and in truth there are still a lot of open questions that need answers. One of those open questions is how many bullets players will be allowed to fire in each Day 1 flight.

Rather than make the decision unilaterally, the operator has elected to go to Twitter for the opinion of its players.

The Twitter poll shows that the details of the Main Event are still in flux, and that lack of clarity with the structure of the Main Event extends to the series as a whole. To date, there is no full schedule yet so players have been unable to plan their full bracelet action for August just yet.

There are a few details already known however. The GGPoker international bracelet series will replicate the domestic series in at least one significant way—the awarding of 33 bracelets through the month.

The series is expected to start on August 1 and run until Sept 12, but little else is known currently about schedule details. What is known is that at $20 million guaranteed, the Main Event will be one of the biggest online games ever, no matter how many runners the game actually gets.

WSOP 2021 at a Glance

Series Location Start Date End Date Bracelet/Ring Events
WSOP Super Circuit Series GGPoker May 1 May 30 18 Rings
WSOP Online Domestic WSOP.com July 1 August 1 33 Bracelets
WSOP Online International GGPoker August 1 September 12 33 Bracelets – $20 Million Gtd.
WSOP Las Vegas ME Satellites Both August 1 October 1 -
WSOP Live 2021 Rio September 30 November 23 TBD
WSOP Live Main Event Rio November 4 November 17 1 Bracelet
WSOPE 2021 King’s Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic November 19 December 8 15
WSOP Winter Online Super Series GGPoker TBD TBD TBD