Welcome to the PocketFives May Live Tournament Preview presented by TourneyTracks.com. In the past, May was a month off for traveling tournament pros, as everyone spent a little time at home with their families and prepared for the World Series of Poker, but those days are gone.

Live tournament poker has grown so much over the past few years that you don’t need to wait for the WSOP to start to find a big tournament series in Las Vegas. Plus, there are major tournaments happening in the rest of the United States in May as well.

East Coast

The WSOP Circuit will be at Harrah’s in Chester, Pennsylvania. The only other major series on the East Coast this month will be at the Playground Poker Room in Quebec. The Circuit Events offer rings to winners of official tournaments, while the Playground Classic offers a professional wrestling-style championship belt to the winner of its $10,000 buy-in High Roller event.

Midwest

The Bluff Mid-States Poker Tour will be in Walker, Minnesota; we’ll be there enjoying the party atmosphere on the lake. The Heartland Poker Tour will at the Majestic Star in Gary, Indiana and the South Dakota State Championship will take place in Deadwood this month as well.

Las Vegas

The MGM Grand Challenge wraps up on May 6th and the Caesars starts its WSOP Warm-Up series on May 4th. Caesars will be adding a WSOP preliminary event seat to the two major tournaments each day and will be running a total of five tournaments per day until the end of the series on May 20th.

The big series in Las Vegas this month will the WPT Championship at the Bellagio. Running from May 4th to May 26th, the WPT Championship starts out with smaller events, but quickly gets into $1,000 and higher events. Multiple $5,000 buy-in events, the $25,000 Championship event, and a $100,000 High Roller event provide buy-in levels for any bankroll.

The Orleans Open will also be running from May 19th to May 27th with smaller buy-ins and deep stacks for grinders. Toward the end of the month, the Venetian Deep Stacks, Caesars Mega Stacks, and, of course, the WSOP itself all get started. This should be the busiest summer in history for tournament poker players, and we’re already busy working on our Vegas Summer Schedule at Tourney Tracks.

West Coast

The West Coast will take it easy this month, with the California State Championship at the Commerce Casino being the only major tournament series in the Southwest. If you are in the Northwest, the Edgewater Casino will host the Spring Ultra Stack toward the end of the month. After the WSOP, we expect the West Coast to be back with a number of big series.

The South

The South is well represented this month, with four major tournament series happening below the Mason-Dixon line. The Player’s Poker Championship is back in Aruba at the Westin Hotel, a beautiful spot to play poker, and WSOP Circuit caps off the season at Harrah’s in New Orleans. We expect big fields in the Big Easy, as a large number of players travel to this series in an attempt to get enough points to qualify for the $1 million WSOP Circuit National Championship.

Florida has a number of tournaments as well, which is something we’re starting to get used to. Vegas outshines the tournament schedules in Florida during the summer, but Florida may become the center of the tournament poker world during the rest of the year. The World Poker Tour will be in Jacksonville for a regional event at the new Best Bet poker room, and the Palm Beach Deep Stack Challenge looks like a good series other than some very high rake percentages.

For more information on any of the tournaments listed, as well as a listing of every major tournament in North America, visit Tourney Tracks. We feature complete schedules, structure sheets, an interactive map with all of our tournaments, directions to events, descriptions, and more.