World Series of Poker: Poker's Biggest Event

The World Series of Poker is the biggest poker tournament in the world. The annual poker series began life as a promotional event back in 1970, but it’s since become a multimillion-dollar brand in its own right. To a large degree, the WSOP is responsible for turning poker into an international phenomenon that’s televised around the world. Today, it sits at the crossroads of card games, sports, and gambling.

What You Need to Know About the WSOP

The World Series of Poker is the biggest, richest. and most famous poker series in the world. Each year, it attracts hundreds of thousands of players. Every event awards a signature WSOP gold bracelet and the chance to be part of poker history.

The crown jewel of the WSOP is the $10,000 buy-in Main Event, which is always the biggest poker tournament of the year. The WSOP offers a prize pool that numbers in the tens of millions, while the WSOP Circuit holds events arounds the globe. 

The WSOP Main Event is so popular that players sometimes refer to it as the World Series of Poker. The tournament is televised for a wide viewing public, while it attracts international media attention. Quite simply, the WSOP is poker’s version of the Super Bowl or World Cup.

Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP Main Event Win

The WSOP’s growth and media exposure vastly increased after 2003, when accountant Chris Moneymaker won that year’s Main Event and $2.5 million in prize money. Moneymaker qualified for the event by winning an online satellite tournament. ESPN rebroadcast key moments from the WSOP for months, showing a mainstream audience that an amateur poker player could win the biggest event of the year.

While the $10,000 Main Event remains the favorite of poker players around the world, the barrier for entry at the WSOP is much lower for amateurs. The series offers events where the buy-in starts at just $500. On the other end of the scale, the Big One for One Drop charity event was introduced in 2012 with a record-setting $1-million buy-in.

The WSOP is so popular that it’s been played by numerous celebrities over the years including actors Matt Damon, Edward Norton, Ray Romano, Kevin Hart, and Jennifer Tilly. Sports stars like Michael Phelps, Georges St-Pierre, Roberto Luongo, Paul Pierce, and Gerard Piqué also enter the Main Event.

WSOP Bullet Points:

How it All Began

The WSOP began as a way for Benny Binion to bring some attention to his casino — Binion’s Horseshoe — in 1970. Binion’s already had a popular poker room, so he was cashing in on its reputation as one of the prime spots to play poker.

The very first WSOP was actually a series of cash games that alternated between several games: No-Limit Hold’em, Seven-Card Stud, Razz, 2-7 Lowball, and Five-Card Stud. After playing for several days, the players voted on an overall Sportsbook: Johnny Moss.

That was the only time the WSOP took place as a cash game. In 1971, WSOP became a No-Limit Hold’em freezeout tournament. It turned out that Johnny Moss was worthy of his colleague’s votes the previous year -- he won the 1971 WSOP championship outright.

The first decade of the WSOP was dominated by a legendary group of gamblers who hailed from Texas, including the aforementioned Moss as well as Sailor Roberts, Amarillo Slim, and Doyle Brunson.

By 1982, the tournament was attracting over 100 elite players. A younger player from New York City named Stu Unger changed the status quo in the early eighties. Referred to as “The Kid,” Ungar was renowned for getting under the skin of his opponents – he was a forerunner for “bad boys” of poker like Phil Hellmuth and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow.

By the time the 1990s rolled around, the Main Event attracted hundreds of players each year, who sought to become WSOP Main Event Sportsbooks and win a 1st place prize worth $1 million. Numerous side events also were on the schedule.

The best was still to come.

Chris Moneymaker Changes Poker Forever

The WSOP experienced steady growth in the 90s. The Main Event went from attracting 194 players to 393. Sportsbooks continued to be famous professionals like Dan Harrington, Huck Seed, and Scotty Nguyen.

The Rise of Online Poker

Despite the internet being in its infancy in 2000, it was clear there was a huge market for online card games. ESPN broadcast the WSOP, while the online poker was becoming a cottage industry. It turned out that poker — particularly No-Limit Hold’em — was a perfect fit for online play thanks to its “simple to learn, hard to master” structure.

Online poker sites popped up rapidly in the early 2000s as investors and entrepreneurs chased the next dot-com explosion. In 2003, an accountant from Tennessee named Chris Moneymaker qualified for the WSOP Main Event by playing a $39 satellite event on PokerStars. 

Moneymaker outlasted all 839 entries and defeated seasoned poker pro Sammy Farha to win $2.5 million. The Main Event’s entry field exploded the next year with 2,576 entries, each with dreams of becoming the next Chris Moneymaker. Since then, most of the WSOP Main Event Sportsbooks were relatively obscure players before. The phenomenon was dubbed the “Moneymaker Effect.”

At this point, the WSOP had outgrown the Binion family’s casino. Sportsbook Entertainment purchased Binion’s Horseshoe and the WSOP in late 2003. By 2005, they had moved to the much larger Rio Casino & Resort.

Over the next few years, the WSOP underwent unprecedented growth, peaking in 2006 with 8,773 entries. Jamie Gold walked away from that tournament with a record $12 million.

Though US online poker has had its ups and downs since, the World Series of Poker Main Event remains the biggest event of the year. It’s attracted 6,000 players every single year over the past decade – the total of 8,569 entries in 2019 was the second highest in WSOP history. 

WSOP Attendance History

WSOP attendance history is, for the most part, a steady record of increases. The end of the poker boom in the late 2000s caused some dip in the size of the field. In the 2010s, the WSOP's organizers added events with low buy-ins and high prize pools -- such as the $500 Colossus events and subsequent $500 Big Fifty event -- that increased attendance to current levels. 

WSOP attendance in 2019 smashed the previous record of 123,865 with 187,259 total entries. The $500 Big Fifty event had 28,371 entries, which set an all-time record for any poker event. 

The Modern WSOP Format

These days the WSOP is a monster poker event, attracting over attracts over 100,000 players on an annual basis. After the Rio hosted the tournament the past 15+ years, two Vegas Strip casinos will co-host the tournament starting in 2022. 

The WSOP generally runs for roughly 50 days in the middle of the summer. There are now over 80 side events and every one of them awards a WSOP gold bracelet. Almost every format of poker is available for play including:

The buy-ins at the WSOP range from just $500 for the Casino Employees event all the way up to $250,000 for the Super High Roller No-Limit Hold'em event. The majority of tournaments at the WSOP take place in No-Limit Hold’em. Most feature a buy-in of $1,500 or less. Recreational card players have a chance of playing something most weeks at the WSOP. 

The WSOP also runs numerous satellites that allow players to qualify for a WSOP event for far less than a direct buy-in. The crown jewel of the WSOP is still the $10,000 Main Event, which takes a little over two weeks. It’s considered one of the “softest” big buy-in events in the world, which makes it a favorite among pros and recreational players.

It’s still possible to pull off a “Moneymaker” of your own by qualifying for the WSOP on an online poker site. It’s one of the best ways to avoid paying the whole cost of a direct buy-in.

WSOP Event Types

There are close to 100 events presented every year as part of the World Series of Poker, with different types of poker, buy-ins, and betting structures represented.

WSOP No-Limit Hold'em Events

Limited Participation Poker Events

Variant Poker Games

WSOP Mixed Game Events

Low Card Poker Events

WSOP High Roller Events