WSOP 2011 – the largest WSOP in 42-year history

WSOP 2011 – the largest WSOP in 42-year history

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Fears about turnouts for the 2011 World Series of Poker were assuaged long ago when records began to be broken – hell, almost a thousand people registered for a Limit Omaha 8 event! However, it has been confirmed that the 42nd annual World Series of Poker is also the biggest in history with a prize pool of $191,999,010.

This beats last year’s record-breaking prize pool by almost four million dollars while the number of entrants increased by nearly three thousand to 75,672. This takes the total amount of money awarded to players over the course of forty-two years to over $1.4 billion dollars ($1,420,374,131 to be precise).


The oldest player to participate in the series was Ellen Deeb, the 91-year-old grandmother of tournament crusher extraordinaire Shaun Deeb. The youngest was Logan Deen, who not only has an awesome name but played Day 1b of the Main Event on his 21st birthday. He has survived to Day 3 and will set an impossible-to-beat record should he win the event – that is, unless a 20-year-old turns 21 on Day 2 and blinds out half his stack throughout Day 1a.


The Main Event itself was the third-largest in the history of the WSOP with 6,865 entrants only being surpassed by the 7,032 total of 2010 and the record 2006 field of over 8,000 players. However, the 2011 WSOP saw the biggest live Omaha 8 tournament of all time (925 entries); the largest Seniors’ event of all time (3,752 entries); the largest tournament with one opening flight (3,175 entries); the largest PLO prize pool in history ($3.39m) and the largest $1,500 single-start-day tournament in history (3,389 entries).


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