2010 World Series of Poker Main Event by the numbers

Four opening days are now in the books, and the WSOP Main Event is in full swing, so I decided to take a look at some of the statistics from the 2010 Main Event which will go down as the second largest major poker tournament of all-time.

With 7,391 total entrants the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event generated a massive prize-pool of nearly $69 million! The winner of the tournament will be looking at a near $9 million payday, and 2^nd place will receive over $5 million; in all the 2010 WSOP Main Event will turn 8 players into millionaires!

Even though attendance was far short of the 8,773 players who participated in the 2006 WSOP Main Event, the 2010 version bested the old second-place record -the 2008 WSOP Main Event– by nearly 500 players.

19 former Main Event Champions took part in the 2010 WSOP Championship: Doyle Brunson, Bobby Baldwin, Tom McEvoy, Berry Johnston, Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, Jim Bechtel, Dan Harrington, Huck Seed, Scotty Nguyen, Chris Ferguson, Carlos Mortensen, Robert Varkonyi, Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Joe Hachem, Jamie Gold, Jerry Yang and Joe Cada. The most conspicuous absence was 2008 Champion Peter Eastgate, who recently announced he would be quitting poker, but there was still a lot of speculation he would play the Main Event.

Of the 19 former champions in the field 13 moved on to play in Day 2: Hellmuth, Huck Seed, Raymer, Hachem, Gold and Yang were unable to survive their Day 1’s.

On the celebrity front Orel Hershiser, Bruce Buffer and Jason Alexander made it through to Day 2 of the tournament.

216 women entered the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event -a number that represents just 3% of the starting field-and for the life of me I cannot figure out how the marketing people for Harrah’s and the WSOP can’t figure out a way to attract more women to the tournament?!?!?! The gender gap in poker is still very prevalent, and there really is no reason that women shouldn’t represent 25% of poker players: Obviously men take to poker thanks to our abundance of testosterone, but 3%, there is something disturbing about that number, and the fact that it hasn’t changed at all over the past decade.

Here is an interesting statistic from the WSOP.com website: Most Main Event Final Tables (Career):

• 5 - Doyle Brunson
• 5 - Jesse Alto
• 4 - Johnny Chan
• 4 - T.J. Cloutier
• 4 - Dan Harrington
• 4 - Berry Johnston
• 4 - Johnny Moss
• 4 - Stu Ungar

Only Dan Harrington has been able to add to his totals in the modern era of poker, a definite example of just how amazing his back-to-back final tables in 2003 and 2004 were -Harrington finished 6^th in 1987, 1^st in 1995, 3^rd in 2003, and 4^th in 2004. Harrington also made the final table in three straight decades.