Welcome to Day 1 of Event #49: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-Handed Championship

The biggest pot-limit Omaha show in town may be in its latest stages as the $25,000 High Roller finishes up today, but there's still plenty of big buy-in PLO action available at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino today as it's time for the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship.

Today is the first of three days of the prestigious championship event, which was won last year by Tommy Le in a field of 438 runners for $938,732. All of the people who busted the high roller are surely still around, so the PLO championship should get a nice field once again as the game continues to gain steam as one of the most popular formats at the felt.

The plan for today is to play straight through with 10 one-hour levels and no dinner break, with 15-minute breaks after every other level. Players will get 50,000 starting stacks with a double level to start off at 100/200, progressing to 800/1,600.

Registration will remain open throughout the day and up until the start of tomorrow's Day 2.

Four-card action kicks off here at the Rio at 3 p.m. so stay tuned here on PokerNews to see one of the marquee events of the summer unfold.

History of PLO Championship

In 2005, Phil Ivey won the biggest buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha event at the series, a $5,000 freeze-out. He beat a field of 134 players to take home $635,603, the biggest share of the $1,765,568 prize pool.

The next year, the event doubled its buy-in with Lee Watkinson taking down the event after beating 217 opponents. In 2007, the event was scaled back to a $5,000 buy-in but now with rebuys. The next year, it was back to $10,000 and the event has had that buy-in ever since.

While a $25,000 edition of the popular game has been introduced in 2015, the $10,000 edition remains a popular event with last year's edition setting a record in terms of attendance with 428 players.

$10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Over the Years

Year	Entries	Prize Pool	Winner	Country	Prize
2006	218	$2,049,200	Lee Watkinson	United States	$655,746
2007	145	$2,891,000	Burt Boutin	United States	$868,745*
2008	381	$3,581,400	Marty Smyth	Ireland	$859,549
2009	295	$2,773,000	Matt Graham	United States	$679,402
2010	346	$3,252,400	Daniel Alaei	United States	$780,599
2011	361	$3,393,400	Ben Lamb	United States	$814,436
2012	293	$2,754,200	Jan-Peter Jachtmann	Germany	$661,000
2013	386	$3,628,400	Daniel Alaei	United States	$852,692
2014	418	$3,929,200	Pat Walsh	United States	$923,379
2015	387	$3,637,800	Alexander Petersen	Denmark	$927,655
2016	400	$3,760,000	Brandon Shack-Harris	United States	$894,300
2017	428	$4,023,200	Tommy Le	United States	$938,732