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Posted by on Jul 14, 2013 in Blog, General Poker, World Series of Poker | 0 comments

Making the WSOP Top 100 — Once in a Lifetime

 

2013-wsop

 

Sometime around 9 pm last night, the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event played down to its final 100 players.

Let’s put this into perspective.

 

This year’s world championship began ten days ago with 6,352 entrants.  Hence, those who made it this far represent about 1/63rd of the starting field.  Practically speaking, this means that for every seven poker tables full of players when the tournament started, just one player out of that entire group is still alive.

But making the “Top 100” is even more special than that.

Let’s say you’re an average poker player relative to all those who enter the WSOP Main Event.  In other words, you have about an equal chance of anyone in the middle of the pack – skill-wise.  Expressed in years, how often would you expect to make the Top 100?

Let’s do the math.  If you enter the Main Event 60 times over the course of your lifetime – which would be the absolute maximum for just about anyone (age 21 to age 81, without missing a single year) – how many times should you finish in the Top 100?  The answer is – once.

That’s right.  One time.

Based on this fact, making the Top 100 is truly a once-in-a-lifetime poker achievement.

Of course, there have only been 44 Main Events held, to date (1970 to the present).  And many of those previous championships had fields that were considerably smaller than today.  Some of the earliest events didn’t even draw 100 players.

Accordingly, most of the performance records associated with the Main Event set by the early pioneers in poker will probably never be broken.  These records include things like Stu Ungar and Johnny Moss winning three world championships each, and Jesse Alto making five Main Event final table appearances.  These records will simply never be touched again given the monster that the WSOP has become.

The modern poker boom gave us 6,000-player fields that now don’t even raise an eyebrow.  Given the direction poker is headed, both internationally and online, future numbers won’t just hold where they are.  They will gradually increase, perhaps dramatically so, making it all the more difficult to make it to the final table or even crack the Top 100.

So, to all of those this year who made the Main Event Top 100 – congratulations.  You are living the dream.  Enjoy the thrill.

It’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Note:  Follow all the 2013 world poker championship action at:  WSOP.com

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