The addition of a number of $1,000 buy-in NLHE tournaments was supposed to be the next big thing for the WSOP, but unfortunately the $1k events in 2010 have come nowhere near matching the massive registration of last year’s lone $1k event. In fact, attendance has dropped dramatically since the first $1k tournament in 2010.

* 2009: $1k attendance was 6,012

* 2010: $1k attendance has been 4,345; 3,042; and 3,289 thus far

So while these massive 3,000+ player fields have boosted overall attendance by 7%, there has also been an almost 5% drop in total prize-money awarded.

The $1k tournaments seem to be siphoning off players from the $1,500 and $2,500 buy-in events, which have also seen a marked decline in attendance numbers. It would appear that while many players liked the novelty of the event in 2009 and made a point to play in the tournament; with six $1k tournaments in 2010 players seem to be picking and choosing which $1k buy-in event to play, instead of participating in every one of them.

It’s likely WSOP officials will get together after the tournament series and decide whether to pare down the $1k events or not. Personally I’d be happy with one very early in the series, and one another towards the Main Event.

Tags: 2010 WSOP, WSOP, WSOP News

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 5:10 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.