Registration for the 2025 World Series of Poker Main Event closed yesterday afternoon, and unfortunately for the executives running the Series, it will not be one for the record-books.

After the last few players registered for the Main Event, 2024’s record-shattering field of 10,112 was not broken. Still, the 9,735 players will be part of the third-largest field to compete for the most coveted prize in poker — $10 million and a bracelet large enough to choke Norman the Scottish Highland Bull.

These players built a prize pool worth $92,579,850. The last nine players are all guaranteed at least $1 million, with the top three earning $4 million, $6 million and $10 million — the same amount last year’s Champion Jonathan Tamayo won.

The tourney started July 2. Players had six days to come up with $10,000 or satellite their way in through WSOP.com and get in yesterday during the first official Day 2. Of those, 6,282 players have already been eliminated, leaving 3,453 to play today.

By the way, the Main Event really isn’t a $10,000 buy-in tournament, but calling it a $9,510 + $490 looks terrible even though that’s what it is. The new owner of the WSOP, GGPoker, grossed $4,770,150 from the fees. Another 2.1% was taken from the overall prize pool for fees that go to dealers and staff, which amounts to $1,944,176 this year.

Unfortunately, 1,992 will bust before making the min-cash of $15,000 for getting to 1,461st place.

This is why the Main Event is the biggest test in poker: This is just the beginning for the players who managed to find two bags. They now need to run the gauntlet for seven more days in order to win the whole damn thing on July 16.

It’s the first time the Main Event didn’t surpass 10,000 entrants since the first time it did in 2023 with 10,043.

Still, 9,735 is an enormous number. Think about this: When Chris Ferguson and his long hair and black cowboy and dancing shoes won the Main Event 25 years ago in 2000, he was one of 512 players.

That’s nearly 150 players less than who entered Day 1 last week.

Then Chris Moneymaker came along. His win in 2003 ignited the Poker Boom, and the WSOP was the main beneficiary. It would only take three years until the entry numbers exploded 10-times to 8,773.

The dreams of hitting 10,000 entrants in the Main Event seemed like a reality until the Federal Government nuked online poker in America with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

It would take more than a decade before 8,000 was again surpassed in 2019 (8,569, won by Hossein Ensan), and then Covid put a brake on things, but it sure seems like the rocket ship has re-launched.

Credit must go to the WSOP and Caesars, who just passed the torch to GGPoker, the online poker giant and the company that just bought the series in last year.