Rebbecca Scales
Ladies Week in Las Vegas
Ladies Week in Las Vegas is in full swing and the city already feels like it has shifted into a different gear. Across town women are gathering for tournaments meetups and side events that have turned this stretch of the summer into its own kind of tradition one that now runs longer louder and more connected than it once did.
What started as a vision from the Women’s Poker Association WPA led by Hall of Famer Lupe Soto has grown into something much bigger over time. It was never just about a single event or a single venue it was about creating a space where women in poker actually had a week that felt like theirs in Las Vegas. Over the years that idea didn’t just stick it expanded into one of the most recognizable parts of the summer poker calendar.
The Heart of Ladies Week
From the beginning Ladies Week has always been centered around the WSOP Ladies Championship the longest running and most established women only bracelet event in poker history. First introduced in 1977 the event began as a small field Seven Card Stud tournament and has grown into a $1,000 bracelet event that now regularly draws thousands of entries each summer.
It remains the biggest stage in women’s poker and the event everything else during the week naturally builds around it.
Over the years it has produced defining moments and recognizable champions who helped shape its place in the game. Jennifer Tilly is one of the most notable winners bringing mainstream attention to the event when she captured the title in 2005. In the modern era Shiina Okamoto has become the standout story winning back to back WSOP Ladies Championships in 2024 and 2025 against fields that have grown to well over a thousand entries. Her repeat victory especially cemented the event’s visibility in recent years as one of the most closely followed women’s tournaments of the series.
WSOP Support and the Growth of Ladies Week
When Ladies Week started to take shape as a broader idea the WSOP was one of the first major organizations to lean into it. When the concept was brought forward Jack Effel who was the WSOP Vice President of Operations at Caesars Entertainment at the time recognized what it could become and helped bring the Women’s Poker Association WPA and Caesars SAVVY initiative into the same conversation.
That mattered because when the WSOP shows support for something the rest of the poker world tends to pay attention. It helped turn what was already a growing idea within the women’s poker community into one of the most visible and lasting initiatives in women’s poker today.
SAVVY was a women’s group inside Caesars working across the gaming industry. WPA was focused directly on women in poker. Different lanes but they were already part of the same space within the industry, sharing a common mission of creating more space for women in the game.
The WSOP Ladies Warm Up
From that connection between the Women’s Poker Association WPA and SAVVY, the WSOP Ladies Warm Up event was born. The idea was simple at its core: create a low cost starting point during Ladies Week that would give women a way to step into the WSOP environment for the first time. It was never about being a headline event. It was about access, introduction, and giving players a place to sit down and experience the series without immediately jumping into the biggest bracelet fields. That original purpose is also why it has remained on the calendar ever since.
As the week has grown around it, the Warm Up has stayed and this year was no different. It opened with current WPA President AJ Rudolph welcoming the room, recognizing the women gathered in Las Vegas and the community that continues to grow around the week, before giving the famous “Shuffle Up And Deal.”
The WSOP Ladies Championship This Year
As always, the WSOP Ladies Warm Up acts as the signal that the Championship week is officially underway. The focus now shifts toward the WSOP Ladies Championship, the $1,000 bracelet event that serves as the centerpiece of Ladies Week. The tournament is scheduled to begin on Thursday, June 26 at noon inside the Horseshoe Las Vegas as the field begins to build toward what is expected to be another strong turnout.
And as the cards go in the air, the question becomes the same every year — who will emerge as this year’s WSOP Ladies Champion.
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