Updates on recent winners with anticipation of the WSOP tournaments starting, Michigan tournament that takes place at the Firekeepers casino located in Battle Creek MI. First place winner took home just over 101k with 10th place taking home just over 5k. In comparison to several other tournaments that prize pool is lower but still a great tournament with good structure. Firekeepers had a rather large turn out with 411 entries (pokernews.com) which will continue to expand as this tournament develops.

Live events for the WSOP start on May 27th (wsop.com) which these will be the main focus in the weeks to come. However, the online WSOP tournaments are increasing in popularity along with the SCOOP events that take place solely online. These offer players the ability to experience large events with a very skilled player field online. Some players will participate in both live and online events which gives the large amount of non U.S. players the ability to participate without having to commute all the way to Las Vegas taking time off work and normal day to day life activities.

With the Olympics taking place in Japan in 2020 (www.pokernews.com) they are in process of passing a casino bill to start the building process. They would need to start the process soon in order to meet the required time frame to complete the project. If this bill can be passed it will bring a large amount of revenue and will be used as one of the main attraction for toruism during the 2020 Olympics,