World Series of Poker 2007 Should Have Had Minimum 14,000 PlayingThe numbers are staggering but they cannot be ignored. World Series of Poker organizers seem content that they have attracted 6358 players in the 2007 event. To anyone who hasn't followed the WSOP numbers these past few years that's a mighty impressive number. And considering just three years ago, there were only 2576 entrants, that 6358 number really stands out.
But that 2576 number more than doubled the following year on the heels of a massive online poker craze that unofficially started the prior year when an unknown Internet poker player, Chris Moneymaker, made his mark on the 2003 World Series of Poker. During that event there were only 839 entrants. By the following year, the number had tripled.
That's been the trend since 2004 and it has been a trend driven by the online poker craze that showed no sign of slowing down until last October when US President George Bush signed into law a measure that would hold banking institutions responsible for preventing online poker transactions.
The new law was successful in forcing World Series of Poker owner Harrah's to shun all online poker establishments - the very establishments that have helped to build the event into such a colossal success over the years.
The law also resulted in big name publicly traded Internet Poker ventures the likes of PartyPoker, Paradise and 888 leaving the US market.
UltimateBet, Absolute, Bodog, Full Tilt, PokerStars all elected to continue catering to US customers.
In January, the US government decided to go after two co-founders of popular online gambling money processing firm, Neteller. This resulted in a ripple effect whereby nearly every "legitimate" online processor doing business with these poker rooms left the US market virtually overnight.
While poker players have been able to deposit and withdraw monies from US-facing online poker rooms, the process hasn't been without its hassles over these past few months.
Proposed legislation to have the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act repealed is now gaining steam in Congress. A critical World Trade Organization decision against the new US law is now forcing officials to rethink their stance on Internet gambling. A filed complaint was entered into the court system last month that claims the UIGEA is "unconstitutional". The complaint itself is widely speculated to be pushed along by the banking sector.
And despite the 6358 individuals entered into this year's World Series of Poker, it appears the WSOP may have been hit harder than any other gambling-related entity by the UIGEA.
StraightFlush.com - a relatively new Internet poker room on the scene - would have paid a decent amount just on WSOP marketing alone.
"StraightFlush.com would have spent anywhere between $300,000 and $500,000 on various forms of marketing, sponsoring of players and making a huge splash had it been possible (to participate in this year's WSOP)," commented Dan Ramiro of StraightFlush.com.
Odds are there would have been a couple dozen other online poker rooms the size of StraightFlush vying for exhibit space and a chunk of the WSOP market. More established poker rooms would have forked over a million dollars each.
But the numbers really stand out when we look at recent WSOP trends, all fueled by the Internet poker craze.
For the last three years, the percentage growth has increased dramatically from 33% in 2004, to 46% in 2005, to a whopping 64% in 2006.
Assuming the percentage growth stayed the same, we would be looking at very conservative numbers for the 2007 World Series of Poker. 64% growth over last year would have amounted to 14387 entries this year. Staggering numbers to say the least.
Instead there was actually more than a 25% decline in actual attendance this year over last year.
Below are the prize and attendance numbers in addition to the 1st and 2nd place finishers from 2001 thru 2006.
2001 Juan Carlos Mortensen K♣ Q♣ 1,500,000 613 Dewey Tomko A♠ A♥
2002 Robert Varkonyi Q♦ 10♠ 2,000,000 631 Julian Gardner J♣ 8♣
2003 Chris Moneymaker 5♦ 4♠ 2,500,000 839 Sam Farha J♥ 10♦
2004 Greg Raymer 8♠ 8♦ 5,000,000 2,576 David Williams A♥ 4♠
2005 Joe Hachem 7♣ 3♠ 7,500,000 5,619 Steve Dannenmann A♦ 3♣
2006 Jamie Gold Q♠ 9♣ 12,000,000 8,773 Paul Wasicka 10♥ 10♠
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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com
Originally published July 10, 2007 10:34 pm ET
