2011 WSOP Main Event crushes expectations: 3rd largest in history

Fear not poker players, Black Friday proved nothing more than a minor bump in the road at the 2011 World Series of Poker. Preliminary event attendance was up overall, and it didn’t matter if it was $10k Championships, or $1k Stimulus tournaments, the pros and casual players all turned up for the WSOP.

With preliminary event attendance up, industry folks started rethinking their predictions for Main Event attendance -which usually fell between 5,000 and 5,500-but then two poor showings on Day 1a and 1b brought the fears of the smallest WSOP Main Event since 2004 back.

But the poker world had other plans, and with 2,108 entrants on Day 1c, and a record-tying 2,802 entrants on Day 1d, the 2011 Main Event not only easily eclipsed the 5,500 mark, it turned out to be the third largest WSOP Main Event in history!

• 2006: 8,773 - Winner Jamie Gold
• 2010: 7,319 - Winner Jonathan Duhamel
• 2011: 6,865 - Winner ???
• 2008: 6,844 - Winner Peter Eastgate
• 2009: 6,494 - Winner Joe Cada
• 2007: 6,358 - Winner Jerry Yang
• 2005: 5,619 -Winner Joe Hachem
• 2004: 2,576 - Winner Greg Raymer

With a $64.5 million prize-pool the 2011 November Nine will see eight players awarded at least $1 million, with the winner of the WSOP Main Event looking at an $8.7 million payday -the fourth largest in WSOP history-and a total of 693 players making the money. Here is a look at the payouts for the final table participants:

1.       $8,711,956

2.       $5,430,928

3.       $4,019,635

4.       $3,011,661

5.       $2,268,909

6.       $1,720,396

7.       $1,313,851

8.       $1,009,910

9.       $782,115

This is extremely good news for poker, showing that the World Series of Poker is not dependent on the online poker sites, and regardless of what is taking place in the poker world as a whole, the World Series of Poker will continue to trudge on having built up a reputation as the only truly prestigious tournament series in poker.

WSOP executive director Ty Stewart told The Associated Press: “Let’s hope that once and for all, people stop underestimating poker… It’s a beautiful game.”