Ty Stewart, World Series of Poker executive director, responds to a question during a news conference at Bally’s Thursday, May 26, 2022. WSOP begins May 31. A rain delay struck poker’s world championship seven years ago. A record-breaking summer storm caused water to seep through the Rio Convention Center’s ceiling and drip onto a section of tables during one of the first days of the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event.
It’s perhaps the most infamous example of an unpredictable occurrence that seemed to accompany the WSOP at the Rio over recent years. It was an unpredictably that WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart can laugh about now, but also one he hopes the event has moved past with its relocation to Bally’s and Paris for this year and beyond.
“We should never have a rain delay on the Las Vegas Strip,” Stewart said last week in a Bally’s conference room right outside one of the main playing areas of the 2022 WSOP. “There’s been a lot of upkeep here, but it just goes to show you don’t know everything that can go wrong. You just prepare the best you can.”
The 2022 WSOP kicked off Tuesday at the dual new venues with the first two of 88 scheduled events for poker’s biggest prize — the WSOP championship bracelet. Action will run through July 21 in what Stewart is confident will wind up as the biggest WSOP of all-time in terms of participation .
In his 17 years with the WSOP, Stewart has overseen several pivotal moments. Those include the advent of the “November Nine” Main Event final table to appeal to a larger television audience in 2008, the introduction of legalized online poker with WSOP.com in 2013 and the addition of several lower buy-in tournaments to increase the WSOP player pool by tens of thousands over recent years.
This year’s move will be every bit as significant as those examples, if not moreso, in continuing to build up the WSOP. We caught up with Stewart a few days before the start of the WSOP for a wide-ranging conversation about all of it.
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