The 54th edition of the World Series of Poker, the world's most prestigious poker series, was held this year from May 30 to July 19 at the Horseshoe and Paris in Las Vegas. Players were treated to 95 live bracelet tournaments, plus 20 online bracelet tournaments, and part of it all was breaking a lot of records. We're going to cover a variety of information that might be of interest to you today.
A total of 215,655 entries were recorded in 95 live tournaments! The cheapest tournament of them all, the $300 Gladiators of Poker, brought in the most entries with 23,088 entries! Four more tournaments broke the 10,000-entry mark, including the most-watched Main Event on record ($1,000 Mystery Millions, $1,500 MILLIONAIRE MAKER, $400 COLOSSUS).
Wondering how much money was raised? Well, we'll tell you. In total, the 2023 WSOP raised the astronomical sum of $440,562,594. To give you a better idea, that's more than the GDP of countries like Nauru ($133.2 million), Palau ($217.8 million), the Marshall Islands ($259.5 million), or the Federated Islands of Micronesia ($404 million).
Of the $440,562,594, $401,837,583 was paid out to players and $38,925,011 went to rake. The rake was divided into two categories. The first category was the fees, which amounted to $27,247,508, and the second category was the payouts to dealers and other employees, which amounted to $11,677,503.
The bracelet winners alone took home a total of $66,286,689, with Main Event winner Daniel Weinman taking home the most - $12,100,000. In 15 events, winners were awarded more than $1,000,000, plus another two million-dollar bounties were handed out for bounties in the Mystery Millions tournament.
Winning at least one bracelet in a lifetime is every poker fan's dream. However, some people manage to win two bracelets in one WSOP. Ryan Miller, Chris Brewer, Chad Aveslage, and Josh Arieh won two bracelets over the summer.
No fewer than 58 American players took home a gold bracelet, including Phil Hellmuth, who added a record 17th bracelet to his collection. Canadian and Chinese players took home 6 bracelets each, Brazilian players won 3 bracelets and Bulgarian players won 2 bracelets. Players from Japan, Switzerland, Moldova, Poland, Austria, Spain, UK, Ukraine, Vietnam, Peru, France, Australia, Argentina, Netherlands, Germany and Portugal each took home one bracelet. As I'm sure you know, the CZ/SK poker scene was left without a bracelet this time around, although Martin Kabrhel came close, finishing in third place in the $250k SHR, for which he took home a handsome $2,279,038.
Finally, we have one more table for you. This one shows the biggest lifetime earnings players have made during WSOP events. Many may be surprised to learn that Antonio Esfandiari, whose record-breaking $18 million hit in the huge One Drop event back in 2012, still holds the top spot!
Source: Pokernews, WSOP, Cardplayer
