Record Breaking Day at the 2007 World Series of Poker

The $1,500 No Limit Hold'em event that began today broke the record for entries in a World Seris of Poker preliminary event with 3,151. (Bodog Beat Image)

Maybe, just maybe, the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event will be bigger than last year's. After all of the back and forth and the uncertain predictions, two things have happened today that seem to indicate that this could be a possibility.

First, the $1,500 No Limit Hold'em event has attracted 3,151 entrants making this the busiest day in the 38-year history of the WSOP. The record number broke the old high mark of 2,998 set during the first week of the World Series in another $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event. It becomes the third largest poker tournament in history. First place will pay $722,914 to the winner. Overall, 324 players will receive prize money out of a total pool exceeding $4.3 million.

The second thing that happened today was Harrah's and the WSOP adding a fourth Day 1 to the schedule. Unfortunately, they've used the scheduled day off before the Main Event to hold Day 1D, but, hey, that's poker. The idea is to seat 3,000 players per day, or roughly last year's attendance number spread over three days instead of the four from last year. So, with the addition of this fourth day it means that something has happened to make Harrah's think that they could potentially have more than 9,000 entrants and enough more to add another day capable of accommodating a full 3,000 more. With that in mind, we can say with some amount of certainty that the pre-registrations have been numerous enough to raise the projections to between 9,000 and 12,000 (see, we're math whizzes), much more than the 8,773 of last year.

What the final number will actually come to remains to be seen, but as we get closer and closer to the day the signs that it will be close to or more than last year seem to be increasing. We could be a little more vague and noncommittal but not much more, we don't want someone to use this against us if we're wrong. We hate being wrong.

Stay tuned for more vague and circuitous logic live from the 2007 World Series of Poker.