“It's one of the ideas we have kicked around as part of highlighting the 10th consecutive year of the event at the Rio,” said Palansky in an interview with PokerListings.
The WSOP has only offered a guarantee on one tournament in its celebrated 44-year history – the $1 million-guaranteed Millionaire Maker, which proved to be a massive success last year.
“After the success of the Millionaire Maker last year, and as you know, that event returns to 2014 schedule, we were looking at other ways to drive new players, dormant players and fence-sitters to the Main Event,” he said.
WSOP Still Undecided on $10m GTD
According to Palansky organizers haven’t reached a consensus on the idea.
“It is among the issues we are still doing due diligence on, but we should wrap up all our 2014 WSOP schedule meetings this week, and hopefully have some news to announce next week,” he said.
Interestingly a $10 million guarantee for first place would instantly make the 2014 WSOP Main Event the second biggest prize in the history of the tournament, behind only Jamie Gold’s record $12 million haul in 2006.
It’s unknown if the WSOP would utilize a similar payout structure to the Millionaire Maker to guarantee the $10 million first-place prize.
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