Arguably the most famous and popular poker event in the world, the WSOP Main Event always manages to draw a crowd. This year, however, the crowd is bigger than ever, and multiple records have already been broken.
A record-breaking number of 10,043 players joined the event – beating the previous record of 8,773 entries by a mile. All those players created an astounding prize pool, which meant the first-place prize amounted to $12.1m.
What has happened during this event? And who had the greatest chance of getting a real money poker win? Find out more about the most prestigious poker event of the year!
2023 WSOP Main Event Recap
More than ten thousand players joined the highly anticipated WSOP Main Event, creating a record prize pool of $93,399,900. The top 1,507 finishers are about to leave the table with at least $15,000 in cash prizes in hand.
The top prize of $12.1 million dollars barely exceeds the previous record prize won by Jamie Gold in the 2006 WSOP event (which was worth $12,000,000), but the rest of the players are bound to receive bigger prizes than ever before, as the prize pool is almost $10.9m larger than it was back in 2006.
Surprisingly enough, this will be only the fifth time a WSOP Main Event champion leaves the tables with an eight-figure cash prize, while the runner-up is about to receive $6.5 million, and third place will end up with $4 million – astounding numbers for anyone who craves to play poker for real money and make a living out of it.
The event, which started on July 3rd and will end by July 17, is already in full swing. By Day 3 of the event, only 1517 players remained in the running for winning the grand prize, which means that soon enough the bubble would burst.
So far, the three top poker pros at the event are Antonio Heredia from the US (with a 1,899,000-chip count by the end of Day 3), Chance Kornuth (with a 1,887,000-chip count), and the Israeli Liran Betito (with 1,775,000 chips).
While Kornuth is a well-known figure in the poker world, with more than $15,465,059 in live earnings over the years, both Heredia and Betito are rather obscure poker players. Heredia has earned only $75,146 from playing poker so far, and Betito accumulated about $605,321 from poker wins over the years.
Anything can change by the end of the WSOP event, and it is very likely for Kornuth to outshine his opponents as the game progresses. And yet, it is very impressive those two poker players managed to hold their own while facing some of the greatest poker players of all time. And who knows? Maybe it is time for a newcomer to win the most exciting poker event of the year.
WSOP Fever is Almost Over
Once a year, the entire poker community watches the best real-money poker event unfold. The WSOP certainly made a loud splash this year and for good reason! A few more days of excitement are ahead of us, but soon enough, we will find out who is the biggest winner of the year.
After that, players will have to find new ways to entertain themselves and earn money by participating in other exciting events that are scheduled to start in future months!