Could WSOP Main Event field top 10K players?

The World Series of Poker was tantalizingly close to a record field for the Main Event in 2022 before falling 110 entries short.

Tournament officials pulled out all the stops to ensure the record falls this summer.

The $10,000 buy-in No-limit Hold’em World Championship begins Monday at Horseshoe Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas with the first of four starting flights. By the time registration ends Saturday, a massive field is expected with one projection as high as five figures.

The final table is scheduled for July 16, with the four remaining players returning the next day and playing until there is a winner. Norway’s Espen Jorstad is the defending champion.

Last year’s Main Event drew 8,663 entrants, just shy of the all-time record of 8,773 set in 2006. Jamie Gold, who won the tournament that year, will perform the ceremonial “Shuffle up and deal” announcement Monday to kick off this year’s Main Event.

The WSOP launched several promotions in an effort to break the record this time.

In May, 15 casinos around the world held satellites starting as low as $140 for guaranteed seats to the Main Event. Online poker site GG Poker held qualifiers for 600 seats, and WSOP.com also conducted satellites for players in Nevada and New Jersey for hundreds of additional seats.

“The mega satellites are great opportunities for people to qualify for tournaments,” WSOP vice president Jack Effel said. “You get a lot of people together, and you aren’t restricted to a single table. You can award a lot of seats in those mega satellites.

“This year, we’ve transitioned out of the single-tables to offer more multitable opportunities and more different buy-ins for the different layers of players.”

This summer, the WSOP has attracted some of the largest fields in live poker history with several more events topping their year-over-year turnout. The $300 buy-in Gladiators of Poker No-limit Hold’em event drew 23,088 entrants, the second largest live tournament in history.

Nate Silver, founder of the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight and an avid poker player, compared the attendance numbers from this year’s WSOP to 2022 on Twitter and projected the Main Event could top 10,000 entrants.

“Last year we were so close, 1 percent away,” WSOP executive director Ty Stewart said. “So this year, we put plans in place to make sure we got a lot more growth than 1 percent.”

Contact David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow @DavidSchoenLVRJ on Twitter.