US Law change affect on WSOP 2007 Player numbers

Wednesday, June 13, 2007 | Adrian Milewski

There has been great debate over the past six months or so about whether the recent Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act which has caused so many problems for US poker players would have a detrimental effect on player numbers at the 2007 World Series of Poker.

The World Series of Poker has enjoyed phenomenal growth in player numbers over recent years and in particular in the past four years since Chris Moneymaker, an amateur poker player, won the main event and along with it $2.5m.

In that year there were just 839 entrants which was already a significant increase on regular WSOP main event fields. Since then the growth has been off the chart with 2,576 players taking part in 2004 when Greg Raymer won $5m, 5,619 entrants in 2005 when Joe Hachem won $7.5m and an amazing 8,773 entrants last year when Jamie Gold won a stunning $12m.

Many experts in the industry predicted that this sort of growth could not continue and that this year they expected the number of entrants to drop from last years mammoth field mainly due to the difficulties caused by the UIGEA law changes in the US which created more of an obstacle for internet players to qualify for the event online.

Although we still have no information on the kind of numbers that will make up the field for the Main Event this year we can look to the earlier events to see player number trends.

So far there is no sign that player numbers are dropping and in fact there has been record setting fields in many of the events. The first $1,500 NLHE event attracted a record 2,998 entrants and the Ladies Event also attract a record number of 1,286 entrants which really shows the growth of women amongst the poker world.

So early signs are that the expansion that Harrahs made at the Rio this year with a custom annex marquee was good planning and that the Main Event could actually grow once again and reach the phenomenal level of 9000+ players.

There’s still time to qualify for the WSOP main event by winning one of the many satellites taking place on Pokerstars.