Turnout for the 2005 WSOP

While I was watching the WPBT WSOP $1500 Holdem qualifier on PokerStars I happened to look around at some of their main event qualifiers. Those pointed to a holding tournament where they listed all the players that had qualified for the 2005 main event. I think there were over 450 people. I was a little amazed at that number, since the tournament is still a few months away, and I can only assume that number will start growing exponentially as the tournament approaches. I meant to go back and verify that number because it seemed rather large, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Well, today, in this article on the PokerStars blog they mention that PokerStars alone has now qualified over 512 players for the WSOP main event. That is more than the total number of players for the 2000 event. From one site. They estimate PokerStars’ contribution to be 1000 players, and the total to be 6600. Unless they cap it, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they end up with over 10,000 people overall. PokerStars might supply the most players of any site, but PartyPoker, Ultimate Bet, and PokerRoom, can’t be that far behind. Plus there are about 100 other smaller sites that are probably going to be sending a player or two.