Was this year’s WSOP, held under the shadow of UIGEA (also known as the Internet gambling ban), a success? Look at some of the numbers from CardPlayer and judge for yourself:
The dust stirred up by the thousands of players who traipsed through the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino the last two months has cleared, and now it’s time to look at some of the figures that came out of the 38th World Series of Poker. With 55 events, the 2007 version was the most ambitious one yet, attracting more entrants than ever before.
The folks at the cashier’s booth greeted 54,281 entrants this year, which is 5,925 more than the 46 events last year drew. Despite this, there wasn’t much difference in the total prize pool. This year’s was $159,492,119; last year’s was $159,018,925.
Last year, each event averaged 1,051 players; this year, that average was 986.
As far as the numbers are concerned, the biggest difference between this year and last year was the number of entrants who played in the main event. The 2007 WSOP champion, Jerry Yang, was one of 6,358 players who vied for a share of what will be the largest live poker tournament prize pool of the year.
So there were more events, with more overall participants, but each event had a smaller number of entrants.
If you can’t get enough of gambling-related numbers, check out the Gaming Abstract, which we’ve been updating. In that sense it’s the New and Improved Gaming Abstract.
Here’s one item of note: Nevada casinos made almost $161 million from poker last year.