Has it been increasing these past days?

last year's 25k hu got 128 and the 10k just gets 24 more? not looking good...

I wasn't THAT concerned til the HU today, now I'm wondering where all the money is

do you really have to ask?

Took a year but we are finally seeing the effects of 350mil of the poker economy locked up/gone.

+1

I reckon we'll see 5000 or so ME entries this year.

+1

Especially, the gone part. I don't believe the locked up portion matters as much as the inability to play online, in general, for US players. I mean, how do you get that 19-24 year old to grind small stakes and parlay it into a trip to the wsop. When my son was a freshman in college he knew about 20-25 students who grinded on a consistent basis. Now that number is 0. Times that by just about every University campus in the U.S.

The online poker marketing monster was generating plenty of new faces to the player pool. Three years ago, I would look at the top 30 finishers in each event and recognize maybe 5, this year I recognize almost half!! Not so many fish able to take shots.

There are some pro's who always wanted it this way at the series. IDK

Yeah.....no. Almost all the fish u are referring to are those avg Joe's who bring someprop or picture of their kids and just play recreationally free their long day at the office. Mostly nit the college aged crowd. Plus many satellites or packages are no longer offered by online poker sites

Edit: Stupid tablet edit. Meant to basically say that the college aged kids by far and large aren't the fish. Sure some are, but the majority of them are the 35 yr old+ guys who don't have time to learn how to crush the game because they have better things to do and a family.

The $1500 NL Shootout is down by over 300 players.

I may just be that people are tiring of NLHE. So far, every single limit variant tournament has seen increased attendance compared to last year.

Lots of guys played in 2011 as a last hurrah of sorts because many backers who were offering live deals aren't doing it anymore so guys were quitting poker and going to work or school, fewer big time investors buying up pieces because it's so difficult to move funds way fewer satellite players, fewer new 21 year olds because they didn't have online poker to give them the money to take shots, lots of people have heaps of money on FTP, tax hikes for foreigners, etc.

Also the WSOP management is god-awful and if that hasn't hurt attendance this year it may in the future.

How about the other events around town? Venetian seems to be way down too. How are Caesars, Binion's and GN doing compared to last year?

fields are smaller and in theory a lot tougher but also a bunch of regs are literally trying to give it away so whatever

Every year WSOP has a popular low Buy In ($1000) with 2 starting days in starting week of WSOP. Which jump starts the event with very big crowd. (Last year they had over 4100 players.) This year they have at the end of the schedule.(July 4 th). Looks like that back fired. That may be one of the reason too !

I would wager that European attendance is waaaayyyy down as well affecting the overall numbers. I seem to recall three years ago 40% + of my various tables were composed of people from Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany etc. The current Eurozone crisis, Greek debt crisis, 25% unemployment in Spain , Italian debt crisis and so on has to be driving European #'s down. Anyone know where to get stats on this?