After months of speculation amongst fans and players, it’s official - we have the first-ever Main Event with over 10,000 entries! 10,043 to be exact, creating a prize pool of nearly $93.4 million. As well as having the largest prize pool in Main Event history, the 2023 Main Event will also have the biggest first-place prize, with $12.1 million going to the eventual winner of the tournament.
Poker Boom 2.0?
The success of this year’s Main Event has had many people speculating whether we’re in the middle of a second poker boom. After Black Friday reduced online poker access for millions of Americans, we saw a stagnation in WSOP numbers, with the number of Main Event entrants hovering between 6-7,000 since the 2006 WSOP.
However, since 2015, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of Main Event entrants year on year, and if it wasn’t for COVID-19, it’s likely the 2006 record wouldn’t have stood for so long. The 2019 WSOP was only a couple hundred players shy of the record, and many people thought it was a foregone conclusion that the record would be broken in 2020.
While the pandemic prevented the record from being broken in 2020, there’s an argument that its effect on the poker world is a net positive. With nothing else to do during lockdown, millions of people started to play poker for the first time, introducing the game to a much wider audience. We’ve also seen popular social media influencers feature in some of the biggest games, such as the Hustler Casino Live Streamer’s Game, introducing the game to a younger demographic.
Big Pay Jumps
With all the talk of a second poker boom and how amazing this record-breaking Main Event is, not everyone is happy with how the WSOP has structured the payouts. The $12.1 million dollar first-place prize seems like an obvious attempt to also claim the record for the largest first-place prize, but doing so has created an incredibly top-heavy structure.
| Place | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|
| 1st | $12,100,000 |
| 2nd | $6,500,000 |
| 3rd | $4,000,000 |
| 4th | $3,000,000 |
| 5th | $2,400,000 |
| 6th | $1,850,000 |
| 7th | $1,425,000 |
| 8th | $1,125,000 |
| 9th | $900,000 |
The payouts at the final table are relatively flat, with only $2.1 million between 9th and 4th. However, at the very top of the payouts, things really ramp up. There’s a $1 million jump between 4th and 3rd, then a $2.5 million jump between 3rd and second, before a gigantic $5.6 million dollar jump between second and first.
To put things in perspective, there’s a nearly $11 million dollar difference between 9th and 1st at this year’s Main Event, compared to the $2.1 million gap between 9th and 4th!
While these are nice problems to have, you have to feel sorry for the player who ends up finishing 9th; it’s still a huge payday, but it’s hard not to imagine what could have been.
What do you think about the payouts at the WSOP final table? Are they too steep or should the Main Event be top-heavy? Who would you like to see at this year’s final table? Stay tuned for all the latest WSOP news and events.
Image Source: Pokernews.com
