Anyone who\’s covered the entirety of any World Series in the poker-boom era knows that the Main Event is pretty much an altogether separate entity than the dozens of events leading up to it. The security is different, media is different, and even the fans are different. I think this funky little graph of the 2006 WSOP — where the bubbles represent the size of the prize pools in each event — illustrates the concept pretty well. Click the image below to enlarge:
x axis = event number
y axis = number of players
bubble = prize pool
What\’s interesting is that, obviously, the number of online qualifiers has everything to do with the size of the ME. Last year, they represented 6,600 of the 8,800 entrants. But with the preliminary events, there were relatively very few getting in via online satellite. So I can\’t imagine these lesser planets will change much at all this go-round.
For comparison\’s sake, below is the same data charted for 1985 and 1975.
Size of WSOP Events: 1975
