Facebook Confirms: 70%-plus of WSOP Fans Are Morons

History of the World (Series of Poker)

Yep, it\’s now time for the WSOP main event numbers game … if entry numbers drop significantly, my ghad what a disaster … whoa is poker! A small drop, as we saw last year, no worries, Team WSOP can spin it accordingly … If they grow slightly, cool, we are right on track since the UIGEA … see, all is fine in the poker world. If they grow TREMENDOUSLY and come anywhere near Jamie Gold-year numbers, holy fugk, the entire world is a better place, starvation has been eliminated, and Osama bin Laden has been captured!

I\’m going with \”slight increase\” … but wouldn\’t be surprised to see \”slight decrease\” or even \”slightly bigger than expected increase\”. The WSOP\’s official fan page on Facebook ran a poll — How many people will you have to beat to win the 2010 WSOP Main Event? — and here were the results:

under 5,000 – 5%
5,000-6,000 – 5%
6,001-7,000 – 25%
7,001-8,000 – 29%
over 8,000 – 36%

Guaranteed: unless we cross the 8k barrier, a super-majority will be wrong.

Fact: They didn\’t have these kinda off-base poll results back in the days of Friendster.

From Moss to Moneymaker:
The Early Decades

The poker world, of course, is going on five decades looking at WSOP main event entries as the biggest, most significant barometer on the health of the overall poker economy. And though I personally think these numbers can be a tad misleading, we know the WSOP is committed to not letting anyone get shut out this year, and has more table-space than ever before to accommodate the main-event masses.

However, about a week-and-a-half ago, registrations were supposedly at 1,700 or so. (1D had about 900, 1C 400, and 1A was the lowest.) Team Pokerati representative The Big Randy went to buy-in and wanted to register for Day 1D. But Day 1D was temporarily closed … part of the plan to space people out. He could accept Day 1C if he had to, but didn\’t want to lock himself down for that since he knew Day 1D would open again. The messed up thing — they wouldn\’t take his money!

The Varkonyizoic Period:
Early 21st Century Poker (aka the Modern Era)

There apparently was no mechanism set up for the Rio to \”hold\” his cash on some sort of provisional registration. I\’m no bona-fide expert, but I gotta think that\’s Casino 101: Don\’t let customers take money off the table, especially when they really don\’t want to. And if there was some reason they couldn\’t treat the different Day 1s like an airline standby list, or make it like college registration … hopefully, for the sake of the all-important number we\’ll be counting over the next four days, not too many people were sent home with an extra $10k for them to re-think about spending \”investing\”.

Last I heard was that Days 1C and 1D were temporarily closed yesterday morning.

Below is the complete historical list of main event entry numbers, so you can see what we\’re competing against this year, numerically, along with additional graphs broken down a bit so you can get a better grasp of exponential growth over time: (Click to enlarge.)

1970 – 38

1971 – 6
1972 – 8
1973 – 13
1974 – 16
1975 – 21
1976 – 22
1977 – 34
1978 – 42
1979 – 54
1980 – 73

1981 – 75
1982 – 104
1983 – 108
1984 – 132
1985 – 140
1986 – 141
1987 – 152
1988 – 167
1989 – 178
1990 – 194

1991 – 215
1992 – 201
1993 – 220
1994 – 268
1995 – 273
1996 – 295
1997 – 312
1998 – 350
1999 – 393
2000 – 512

2001 – 613
2002 – 631
2003 – 839
2004 – 2,576

• 1A – ????
• 1B – ????

2005 – 5,619

• 1A – 1,885
• 1B – 1,857
• 1C – 1,877

2006 – 8,773

• 1A – 2,138
• 1B – 2,182
• 1C – 2,160
• 1D – 2,154*

2007 – 6,358

• 1A – 1,287
• 1B – 1,545
• 1C – 1,743
• 1D – 1,783

2008 – 6,844

• 1A – 1,297
• 1B – 1,158
• 1C – 1,928
• 1D – 2,461

2009 – 6,494

• 1A – 1,116
• 1B – 873
• 1C – 1,697
• 1D – 2,808

2010 – ????

* I know this number is off by one. Any corrections greatly appreciated. Likewise good stuff if anyone can fill in the question marks for Day 1s in 2004.