Starting on 3 June 2010, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournament is the largest and most popular of all poker tournaments in history. With the 2010 tournament being the 41st WSOP, the tournament may be reaching middle age, but it definitely shows no signs of slowing down.

When the event first began back in 1970, it was a particularly small occasion where Benny Binion, the owner of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, asked six of the world’s most popular poker players to come to his casino for a chance to play together and take home an undisclosed prize fund.

Seeing the popularity of the first event, which was won by Johnny Moss, Binion recreated the tournament a year later in 1971, when Johnny Moss won once again, beating 5 other players to the 30,000 US dollar prize money.

Looking at how popular the tournament is today, it’s difficult for most that weren’t actually there at the time to understand just how slowly the WSOP grew. It may have been receiving a respectable amount of press, but largely because poker wasn’t a mainstream topic, it took over a decade until 100 players were involved.

Fortunately for those players who had taken part in the tournament throughout the 1970s, the prize money had increased almost year on year, reaching a peak of 340,000 US dollars in 1977 before it saw a small decline a year later. By 1980, however, it was back up to a record breaking amount of 385,000 US dollars – a figure which seems minimal when compared to the modern day prize fund.

By the time the 1990s had arrived, the number of players in the World Series of Poker was close to 200 and 1991 saw the first time that over 200 people entered, which was also the year that the prize money reached 1,000,000 US dollars.

Won by Brad Daugherty in that year, the prize money stayed unchanged until the turn of the millennium, when an immense increase in popularity for the tournament began.

Thanks Tadalis SX largely to the development of online casinos and the increased worldwide TV coverage that the event was receiving, the prize money increased to 2,000,000 US dollars in 2002, with participants also reaching a record breaking figure of 631.

Whilst it wasn’t apparent at the time, two years later proved to be the last year where a respectable and comfortable prize money amount was competed for by several hundreds of poker players.

When 2004 came, the number of entrants rocketed to a staggering 2,576 players. With a prize fund to match of 5,000,000 US dollars, Greg Raymer scooped the highest prize money in the tournament to date, not knowing that this figure was several million short of what the prize would be in a few years time.

The most famous of all poker tournaments peaked in 2006, when 8,773 players competed for 12,000,000 US dollars, the largest prize money amount for any sports tournament in history. What’s also interesting is that aside from Jamie Gold who took the main prize, the 11 players after him all became overnight millionaires.

The World Series of Poker tournament may now officially be in its forties, but with the backing it receives and the loyalty of its fans and followers, it should be able to look forward to another 40 years of massive popularity.

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Category: Recreation and Leisure/Gambling
Keywords: poker tournaments, poker, tournaments, poker tournament, straight, stud, draw, community, wsop, world series of poker