Can Harrah's Hit the 10k WSOP Mark?

Can Harrah's Hit the 10k WSOP Mark?


  The registration for the annual World Series of Poker has grown every year, reaching record heights in 2006, including a field of players for the WSOP main event that topped 8.7k. The numbers have grown so large that the pros understood that winning the WSOP main event has become something of a crap shoot, even though some pros manage to make it year after year to the final table. With the momentum generated from Chris Moneymaker's win in 2003 and the online poker boom, WSOP officials were projecting a 10k field for the 2007 WSOP main event, but with registration numbers way down from last year this may not come to pass.



  Last year so many online poker rooms were offering seats to the WSOP main event - some of them dozens of seats - that a large percentage of the players at the main event were there on a freeroll. Now that Harrah's Entertainment, the owners of the WSOP, have stated they will not accept registrations from online poker rooms, the attendance may be in danger of dropping for the first time in years.



  Many online poker rooms still offer "WSOP Seats", including a $10k prize to pay for the buy in, but it is all on the honor system. If players win the seats and then choose not to register for the event, they get $10k for whatever else they want - and it seems that, so far, many are choosing that "whatever else."