The people of Harrah’s dropped off an early Christmas present for poker fans in the form of the schedule of events for the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) and some details and info about the biggest event of the year as well.

The upcoming WSOP will run from May 27th – July 17th at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas as usual, but rather than using the convention center’s Amazon Room as home base, the primary tournament room will be the Pavillion area, which can hold more than 300 tables and hopefully avoid the sell-out days that became somewhat commonplace in 2009. The Poker Kitchen will be located inside the halls instead of a tent outside, setting up inside the Miranda Room, which was used as a place to hold satellite events during the previous series.

On the events front, there will be 57 bracelets up for grabs, which is the same number of events as last year. The highly popular stimulus special, the $1,000 buy-in tournament held during the previous series, will be back and bigger than ever in 2010. There will be a $1,000 buy-in event held every weekend for the first five weekends of the WSOP.

The bigger buy-in events will also see some changes in 2010, most notably the $50,000 HORSE event. That tournament will switch to an 8 Game rotation and the final table will switch to entirely No Limit Hold’em. This event will return the ESPN WSOP coverage and the winner will receive the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy. Renamed the “Players Championship,” this tournament will kick off the WSOP festivities, getting underway on Friday May 28th. A new high buy-in event has been added to the schedule as well. Internet poker pros rejoiced at the inclusion of the $25,000 buy-in 6-handed No Limit Hold’em Event, which will get underway on June 30th.

The Main Event is scheduled to begin on July 5th and no tournaments are scheduled to take place on the 4th of July. Like previous years, there will be four starting days for the $10,000 buy-in Main Event and the tournament will run from the 5th-17th.