WSOP blind structure is only marginally better.

[Turn Prophet]

Even though the blinds start twice as high, it's still advantageous to have 20k chips instead of 10k for the later levels, because although you cut out one level of play, for every other level, you have effectively put twice as many chips in play, meaning that M's will be a lot higher with blinds of 200/400, 300/600, etc than they would be if you only got 10k in chips. More play in the middle levels is a very good thing IMO.

Is this is a stage toward raising the buy-in to $20k? Eh, I don't think so. If anything it's probably just following the trend of the Bellagio structures and other similar WPT structures that have been recently adopted. All in all I think it's a very positive move... not as good as the 2007 Borgata Winter Open structure (30 chips, 25/50 starting blinds, wow), but definitely better the old structure and realistic given the expected size of the field this year.