Halfway Through the First Lap
Saturday, July 4, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
We just got the numbers on Day 1B–873 players took to the felt in the Main Event today. That’s a substantial decrease from Day 1A, when there were 1,116 players in the field. Add the two together and that’s 1,989 players so far in the Main Event, which is also substantially lower than the 2,455 who played on the first two days of the Main Event last year.
What with the economy it was fair to assume that Main Event participation would see a dip this year, but the numbers held pretty good during the preliminary events and there was reason to believe that the size of the ME would remain about the same. And there still is reason to believe that 2009 will see approximately the same number of players as last year, as pre-registration for Day 1C and 1D is supposedly quite robust and there are still satellites running all day. The field for the first two days is about 19% smaller than it was at this point last year–a 19% overall decrease would mean a Main Event field of around 5,544. Which would still be a massive poker tournament with a staggering prize pool.
But let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. There’s no saying how many players will line up tomorrow and Monday to plunk down their $10,000 and lock up their seat. You’d think that if any outside force could cause the Main Event to downsize by a fifth, “global economic meltdown” would rank just slightly below “asteroid strikes Las Vegas”. But, again, let’s wait until the size of the field is established in 48 hours’ time.
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Tags: 2009 main event, 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, Main Event, size of 2009 main event, size of 2009 wsop main event, world series of poker, WSOP
