WYWAB 2026

No Prizes, No Cash, Just Fun

There will be no prizes (unless there are). If there are prizes, I, Cliff Matthews (aka deadhead), won’t be eligible for them.

Overview

WYWAB stands for “Wish You Were At BARGE”, the Big August Rec.Gambling Excursion, held this year July 20th through 25th at The Orleans in Las Vegas, Nevada. BARGE provides the inspiration for this series.

WYWAB is a series of free tournaments—one per day—whose structures are drawn from the tournaments spread at BARGE.

This series is not sanctioned, endorsed or in any other way sponsored or related to the BARGE organization. It is being put on by Craft Poker Co., a completely unrelated corporation.

The link in the Event column of the table below is a link to the Mb2 structure sheet and will be definitive. You can compare those against the official 2026 BARGE structures.

All are welcome

All events in this series are open to the public.

Starts before BARGE

Unlike 2024, when WYWAB ran alongside BARGE, this year’s series starts before BARGE and ends before BARGE culminates. WYWAB runs July 16th through 22nd; BARGE runs July 20th through 25th. That way people attending BARGE have a chance to play BARGE’s esoteric games online before playing them in real life.

One Tournament a Day, All at the Same Time

Unlike 2024, when WYWAB mirrored BARGE’s varied start times, every WYWAB 2026 tournament starts at 5:05 pm Pacific time (which is also 6:05 Mountain, 7:05 Central and 8:05 Eastern). That is the standard craftpoker.com daily tournament time.

In the mb2 lobby, the times will be in the time zone your browser is configured for (which—for most people—is your local time zone).

Round Duration

All levels will be five minutes long.

There will be a five minute break that will start after each table has completed a hand at 55 minutes past the hour or later. That means the last table to finish a hand at 55 minutes past the hour or later will get exactly a five minute break and all other tables will be paused while waiting for that table to finish a hand.

Late Registration and Re-entries

Late registration and re-entry rules vary per tournament. Consult each tournament’s Mb2 structure sheet for the specifics.

Leaderboard

There will be a “WYWAB 2026 Leaderboard” entry in the Leaderboard menu available in the lobby. By default, only players with a net Fun Money win show up on leaderboards, but if you’ve played and have a net loss, you can see your entry by having the shift key held down when you select an entry from the Leaderboard menu.

The Tournaments

Some Differences

WYWAB is a one-per-day selection of BARGE’s tournaments; not every BARGE event is replicated, and some BARGE games (such as Funbook, CHORSE and Blackjack) aren’t games that mb2 knows how to deal.

For the tournaments that are dealt, some differences are just to improve the online experience and keep the tournaments from taking too long:

• All rounds are five minutes long.

• There are no chip races.

• Breaks start “on the 55”, which means that once each table has finished a hand after fifty-five minutes after the hour, all tables will get a five minute break.

• Mb2 does not yet know how to change the number of seats for the final table, so each final table will have the same number of seats the tournament starts with.