2023 WSOP Day 37: WSOP Main Event About to Set New Records

New WSOP Main Event and largest-ever poker tournament records are all but secure as the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 Main Event No-Limit Hold’em World Championship has already attracted more than 5,000 entries with more than 3,000 coming on Wednesday’s Day 1c alone.

While the Main Event action was buzzing at the Horseshow Las Vegas and the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino it was silent the rest of the way with no other live bracelet events planned for Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Sam “ApesSonIMHO” Soverel took to the virtual felts to defeat Gergely “wildace_hun” Kulcsar at WSOP.com in the two-day Online Event #13: $5,300 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller Championship for his second bracelet and the $393,516 top prize.

Read on to learn more about the 2023 WSOP Main Event:

Christopher Brammer Bags Day 1c Main Event Chip Lead

The Horseshoe and Paris were packed despite the 11-day Event #76: $10,000 Main Event No-Limit Hold’em Championship being the only bracelet event on tap. The Day 1c set a new gold standard for the penultimate opening day of the Main Event with a banner crowd of 3,080 players getting into the mix.

United Kingdom’s Christopher Brammer bagged the most out of the 2,326 players that survived after five blind levels of two hours each with a 483 big blind stack of 386,100. Thus far, Brammer is only behind Day 1a chip leader Yehuda Dayan (389,900) entering the combined 2A/2B/2C second day on Friday, July 7 at 12 p.m.

A trio of Americans in Michael Banducci (292,600), Lawrence Cheng (280,900), and Roman Valerstein (273,300) also found themselves on the top of the Day 1c leaderboard with Netherlands’ Michael Pinto (266,600) rounding out the top five.

Thursday will feature the final opening flight with cards in the air at 12 p.m. PokerGO will be broadcasting a feature table for free throughout the day for those that have time to follow along. Surviving players from this flight will have a day off before returning to battle for Day 2D on Saturday at 12 p.m. Players can still late register during the first two blind levels of both Day 2s and players that survive either of the Day 2s will play in a merged field for nine more days until a winner is crowned on July 13, 2023.

2023 WSOP $10,000 Main Event Top 10 Leaderboard

Here is a look at the 2023 WSOP Main Event chip leaderboard through the first three opening flights:

Will the WSOP Main Event Break Records on Thursday?

The question appears to be if, and not when, the WSOP Main Event and the largest poker tournaments records will be smashed.

The record was set back at the peak of the poker boom before American regulators began to crack down on online poker with Jamie Gold outlasting a field of 8,773 entries in the 2006 WSOP $10,000 Main Event to win the $12 million top prize. Gold welcomed the players on Day 1a of this year’s Main Event in anticipation that the record prize pool of $82,512,162 set in 2006 would be smashed this year.

Last year came close to breaking records with Espen Jorstad defeating a field of 8,663 players for a $80,782,475 prize pool to win the $10 million top prize. Thus far, this year’s Main Event is set to smash those records thanks to 5,238 players taking their seats during the first three opening flights with this figure expected to approximately double with the biggest opening flight in Day 1d yet to begin and late registration still open on Day 2.

WSOP Main Event Year-By-Year Comparison

The 2023 WSOP Main Event attendance figures are impressive anyway you want to slice and dice them. We compared this year to last year as the 2022 WSOP Main Event was just 110 players away from the record figures established in 2006 and have calculated a whopping 46% increase from the 3,580 players participating during the first three flights of the 2022 WSOP Main Event to the 5,238 thus far in the mix this year. Here is a look at the comparison thus far:

July 6 WSOP Schedule

The Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas will be packed with poker players for what promises to be a record-breaking Day 1d of the 2023 WSOP Main Event. New bracelet events will resume on Friday after all of the Main Event opening flights are in the books but players can instead battle it out online with WSOP.com hosting the one-day Online Event #14: $400 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo at 3:30 p.m.

Head to the PokerPro opening WSOP article to check out the full schedule of the 2023 World Series of Poker.

Images and hand details courtesy of WSOP/PokerNews.