WSOP players continue to ante up in record numbers

LAS VEGAS — When poker patriarch Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson played in the first World Series of Poker in 1970, five players joined him for the tournament.

This year Brunson was one of 8,773 players in the WSOP's main event, the last of 46 tournaments played over seven weeks at the Rio Suites Hotel & Casino.

"We haven't seen anything yet," Brunson says. "I don't know where it's going to stop. I think in the next 10 years, they might have 50,000 players for the main event."

Brunson joked the WSOP might need a stadium instead of a massive ballroom such as the Amazon Room used this year. About the size of two football fields, it was barely large enough to contain this year's tournament.

Two weeks before Jamie Gold won a record $12 million for winning the $10,000 buy-in, No-Limit Texas Hold'em final table that ended Friday morning, Jeffrey Pollack was thinking along those lines.

FINAL TABLE: Gold hits $12M jackpot by winning poker's top prize

"Our biggest challenge is space," says Pollack, the commissioner of the WSOP and the vice president of sports and entertainment marketing for Harrah's, which owns the WSOP. "We want to stay at the Rio; we just have to find a little more space, and I think we will."

This year the WSOP numbers were record-setting. Compared with last year:

• The main event had 8,773 players, up from 5,619.

• Total entrants were 48,366 for the 46 events, up from 32,321.

• Prize money was more than $159 million, up from $103 million.

• There were players from 56 countries, up from 45.

• The women's event attracted 1,128 players, up from 601.

Poker's explosive growth, fueled by the Internet and television, influenced the WSOP to make changes this year. Sports network ESPN offered a live pay-per-view telecast of final-table play of the main event for the first time, and Bluff Media, publisher of poker magazine Bluff Magazine, produced live radio broadcasts from the WSOP for the first time.

In another first, Card Player Media, the publisher of poker magazine Card Player, offered live online hand-by-hand reporting from the tournament floor, streaming videos of player interviews and event recaps.

Expect more changes. Among the topics Pollack and his staff will discuss will include adding more outlets to their media program, promoting the pay-per-view year-round and playing the main event final table over two days.

"This tournament will always be a work in progress," says the former marketing executive with the NBA and NASCAR. "Right now poker kind of smells like NASCAR did six or seven years ago before they made changes and moved from a regional phenomenon to a national and now global phenomenon."

Poker players, especially the Players Advisory Council, which Pollack created this year and is composed of six poker pros who meet monthly with company executives, surely will offer suggestions.

One may be as small as the chip.

"The chips were getting so ridiculous and so cumbersome they should add a $500,000 and $1 million chip," Gold says.

Other suggestions will include exchanging some of the No-Limit Hold'em events with other poker games, including stud high-low and Omaha high-low, and raising the entry fees for each tournament to curb growth while not necessarily stunting increases in prize money.

"If they don't increase the buy-ins, over the years, this tournament will last six months," poker pro Jennifer Harman says.

For now, Pollack says there are no plans to raise entry fees. So expect a bigger WSOP next year.

"Next year, I expect to see 10,500 players in the main event," poker pro Phil Gordon says. "I expect to see the total prize pool around $200 million."

courtesy of Steve DiMeglio

News Added: 15 August, 2006

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