This year’s World Series of Poker Main Event never had a chance of being as big as 2019’s. But it also never had a chance of being as small as 2020’s.
The final entry count of 6,650, announced a few hours after the late-registration window closed on Wednesday afternoon, lands the 2021 edition at the Rio in Las Vegas in that sizable sweet spot between the two extremes.
The 2019 total of 8,569 was the second-largest Main Event field ever — just 204 entries shy of the record set in 2006 before the passage of UIGEA brought a premature end to the boom-iest part of the poker boom. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic rendered a massive in-person World Series impossible, so WSOP organizers settled for two online poker tournaments with live final tables and a head-to-head meeting of the winners.
