The entrants in the World Poker Tournament have decreased this year, around 25% smaller than last year. But the WSOP tournaments says a bit different with 3 out 9 events sold out at present. It only means that people are interested to enter but oddly no more rooms to crammed them in.
Looking for evidence? Let’s check the WSOP statistics from 2003 till the previous year. Year 2003 mark the win of Moneymaker and the WSOP only had 839 players. In 2004, the number of players have gone to 2,576, about three times more than the previous year. And then the jump to 5,619 in 2005 and 8,773 in 2006. WSOP series in 2007 and 2008 got 6,358 and 6,844 players respectively.
The decrease would be attributed to the passage of the UIGEA in which a number of poker sites have leave the US market. Since this event a lot of poker fans have given up in playing online and also it mark the decrease in online satellite opportunities that gives chance to players to play in big tournaments.
Though the government really tried to pursue closing down all poker sites online, just check out the statistics. More than 6000 players since the year after the UIGEA was passed signifies that a lot of people wanted to play online poker!
The biggest testament in this would be the success of the $1,000 NLHE tournament which saw at 6,000 runners. This non Main Event tournament called the “Stimulus Special” by the WSOP brass has seen the triumph of poker pro Steven Sung despite the large number of players.
It will be hard to say if the players this year can reach 6,000 because of all the hinders such as the recession, swine flu and more UIGEA forces. But as the number in the preliminaries are big, maybe the Main event this present year will turnout to be one of the largest so far.
Since there is a surge of population despite the UIGEA maybe it will be time for the government to legalize and legislate poker in the internet. Poker is a fun and entertaining game and I’m certain that there would be more happy faces when the UIGEA will be repelled.