WSOP Unveils First-Ever $250,000 Pro-Am Event for WSOP Paradise
The World Series of Poker revealed on September 16 that it will run its first-ever “pro-am” bracelet event as part of WSOP Paradise, with a buy-in set at $250,000. The announcement came via the WSOP’s official social media account, according to Card Player.
Under the format, amateur players must apply for consideration, and a WSOP Pro-Am Committee decides who receives an invitation. Professionals do not need to apply or be invited. Once the field is set, amateurs and pros compete in separate brackets, with amateurs facing only other amateurs, until both sides reach the money.
How the format differs from last year’s Triton crossover event
WSOP Paradise hosted a similarly structured $250,000 event last year, co-promoted with Triton, according to Card Player. That version worked differently: recreational players each nominated a corresponding professional who gained entry alongside them, producing an even split between amateurs and pros across the whole field. The two groups played separately only on Day 1 before combining into a single tournament for Day 2 onward.
The new WSOP-run version reverses that logic. Instead of pairing each amateur with a nominated pro, the tournament classifies entrants as either amateur or professional through the application and committee-review process, and keeps the two pools apart deeper into the event, all the way to the money on each side.
Card Player’s Mo Nuwwarah, writing in an opinion column, raised questions about how the WSOP intends to draw the line between amateur and professional status. Nuwwarah pointed to the example of Michael Moncek, a player with two WSOP bracelets and $8.4 million in tournament cashes who also plays cash games at stakes high enough to be tracked publicly, as an illustration of how blurry that distinction can get in practice. The column also questioned who sits on the Pro-Am Committee and what criteria it will use to evaluate applicants, noting that the WSOP has not detailed that process publicly.
The debate touches on a broader shift in how invitational formats have crept into tournament poker. Card Player’s column drew a comparison to the short-lived Professional Poker Tour, an invite-only series built around pros playing against other pros, which never gained lasting traction. The pro-am model instead pairs professional fields against a curated amateur pool, a structure that WSOP and Triton first tested together at last year’s Paradise stop.
No date or full field details for the new $250,000 pro-am have been released beyond the initial announcement. WSOP Paradise has served as the WSOP’s Bahamas-based series since it launched, and the event will mark the tour’s first attempt at running the pro-am concept entirely in-house rather than as a joint promotion with Triton.