WSOP prize pool allocations
It's that time of year to announce why all these club points are worth fighting for.
Editor’s Note: This edition of the newsletter is almost exclusively content for our weekly poker club. We give out points for top finishers each week. These points and our WSOP prize pool are the data used to figure who we are going to send on the annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas on a hunt for wrist jewelry. If you aren’t a member of our club and have no interest in such things, worry not about skipping this edition. If you aren’t a member but are intrigued, read the “About Our Game” page and let me know if you have any questions. Whatever the case, have a great day.
The time of year to announce our WSOP prize pool allocation is upon us. If you are new to the club, this is the time in our fiscal year that we have an idea of how much money we will have at the end of our points race - April 30th. As previously announced, we will have our drawing for $500 with each point serving as an entry into the drawing. However, the meat of the allocation goes into the expenses paid trip to Vegas for the WSOP.
The past couple years the prize pool has swelled to an amount that we felt should be distributed to more that one person taking the WSOP package as a whole. The compromise we found was second place taking $900 cash and the winner taking the rest to the desert.
The 2023 package was won by Joe Schwenk who took $3000, yours truly went in 2024 with $3750, and Dave Paukovitz took it down last year for $4230. Through these years the goal has been to offer opportunities to send club members on a trip that perhaps wouldn’t happen otherwise. The goal was never to enter a player into the Main Event or to give a percentage back to the club. It is simply to offer more experiences to our members.
If you have followed these newsletters for long - bless you - you know that a personal goal of mine has been to award multiple packages in a year and thus expanding the chances of this opportunity to each club member.
Well I am overwhelmed with excitement to announce that this is the year! The Freezeout Poker Club will be sending 2 of our players to Las Vegas this summer for some WSOP action.
Before I get into the details, let me say that this is because the members of this club. Your participation, recruitment, and feedback have made the growth of our membership and prize pool possible.
The first place an second place packages will, unfortunately, look very similar. We will take $500 for the drawing from the package total then divide the remainder by 2. This would give us 2 equal numbers. However, to create some modest delineation we will make the 1st prize slightly bigger. I decided that $30 times the number of points that separates 1st from 2nd place in points should do the trick.
Lets give an example and hopefully this we be more clear. Say the total prize pool comes to $6500. From this we take the $500 for the drawing - of which the 1st and 2nd place players are ineligible. That leaves us with $6000 to split between the 2 prizes. Lets assume that 1st place is leading by 10 points - as is currently the case. take the 10 points times $30 would equal to $300. 1st place prize would pay $300 more than the 2nd place so $6000 would break into $3150 and $2850 respectively.
The past 2 years we have stated that the winner must spend $2000 on WSOP bracelet event buyins. That seems a bit too restictive for prizes of this size considering these funds need to provide for airfare and lodging for the recipient. Therefore, we will be reducing the obligation to $800 in WSOP bracelet buyins. This should give our winning players plenty of opportunities to find a buyin this summer that works for them.
I do want to note that it is not lost on me that our current leader Chris Lannoye (ToyCollector) has a sizeable lead. This announcement is meant in no way as a reaction to that lead. If anyone has been deserving of a large merit based prize package it is this man for the way he has destroyed all of us on the virtual felt thus far.
This is just the timing that works for the growth and direction of this club and was going to happen at some point.
I hope that everyone participates and does their best to make a run at one of these prize packages and be sure to watch the leaderboard as we finish out these last 3 months!
In related news, I just got word from Joe Schwenk that our game tomorrow (2/3/26) will start at 6:00 pm central due to a PokerStars system update later that night. There will be a 1 hour late registration so please keep this time change in mind.
While I am at addressing the Club, I want to remind you that Joe, Jonathan, and I will be going over ideas and suggestions for changes next year (May 2026 - April 2027). I always ask for input before our annual meeting in March but am happy to hear from you anytime of the year. If you have something you would like for us to discuss as a potential change or suggestion, please let me know at mikieculpepper@gmail.com. We already have a few suggestions that I really like and want to hear some more. It’s your club. Tell us what you want to see.