Kudos to them for not adding flights or making any changes to the event like some clubs have done when facing this large an overlay. Thoughts on why there were so many fewer entrants this year?

I'm sure the cheating scandals coming out of places like Houston didn't help.

I suspect it's also a sign of the poker economy (and likely economy as a whole) tightening up. With inflation, the cost of housing and the cost of borrowing sky high people have less disposable income.

Warren Buffett is reportedly accumulating liquid cash reserves, which should tell you something. He seems to be expecting a major correction in the markets.

To go along with the overlay in Texas, The Moneymaker Tour is currently in Palm Beach, and a bunch of their tournaments have had overlays too (although not to this extent). This seems fairly unusual for South Florida at a time when there really aren't any other major series that they're competing against.

My local room is hosting a relatively big event this weekend and I'm not playing it because it's the time of year when I'm looking to save my poker budget for the WSOP and other summer series. I'm not sure mid-May is really the ideal time to host a marquee poker tournament in the southwest. The more casual players who might otherwise take a stab at it are probably sitting on some of their money with an eye on the upcoming summer schedules.

That's my kneejerk theory anyway.

The cost of borrowing is not sky high

Corporate profits are

Warren Buffett is lucky to breathe every morning. Lot's of series going on currently, like Cherokee, etc.

Borgata just had a big overlay in their main event too. I think this is just a bad weekend with it being Mothers Day, people saving their bankroll for the WSOP, and a lot of different series going on at the same time. New tours and in-house series are popping up like crazy.

Not adjusted for actual inflation as opposed to government reported. Since Social Security got a legislated COLA adjustment the government has made 20+ changes in how they measure inflation and all have resulted in a lower measured inflation making the government reported number dishonest.

Friendly reminder that NVG is a zero politics zone.

Yea planning this on Mothers Day weekend when lots of people would be unavailable on Sunday was a scheduling fail, that’s maybe the main reason.

Honestly, I feel like poker is dying. I mean, it has been dying slowly for years but I feel this year it is accelerating. Maybe it’s the economy, maybe it’s fear of war, maybe political tensions, or maybe it’s just not as interesting as it used to be to most people. It’s all robotic now and even the broadcasts of the WSOP aren’t as much fun as they once were. Shoot, the lighting and color scheme changes alone make it less….magical?

The pizzazz is gone. RIP poker.

??

wasn’t last year the biggest wsop ever?

I just meant there weren't other series going on in South Florida. It's common to see a big overlay when someone tries to run a series competing with a bigger series at the Hard Rock, for example. Right now the Moneymaker Tour is the only major series going on. Anyway I could be wrong but what I said is my gut feeling. I'm basing this on how I'm seeing overlays all of a sudden when guarantees were getting obliterated, and I'm seeing a few prices suddenly drop in grocery stores when the price increases with inflation were out of control before.

Buy some SPY and join the party

Who would plan a $2M guarantee event without checking the holiday schedule first? I would fire whoever is responsible for putting on this tourney.
That’s a lot of $11/hr time fees to make up for one error.

This year isn’t last year. The possible concerns people might be responding to that are mentioned in my post are significantly higher this year.

Not only that, but the WSOP are masters at manipulating their data/reported data to fit the narrative they’re creating.

For example, I was watching part of the Gladiator event from last year on PokerGo and the announcers keep talking about how they had 23,000 entries and blah blah blah. Turns out it was right around 10,000 unique entries while more than half of the 23,000 entries were rebuys. The way they reported it was clearly an attempt to make it sound as though 23,000 people had entered the tournament when that was not the case.

So “biggest WSOP ever” is based on whatever metric they’re using. I believe they’re talking about number of Main Event entries. Which is fine. But I think inflation worked in its favor for that particular event. $10,000 just isn’t what it used to be so, naturally, more people are able to take a shot.

While that’s still true this year, I think last year, people were more optimistic about the economy and state of the world. I think they believed the high inflation was temporary while, this year, it certainly seems to be more of a permanent situation. Plus, inflation has had an additional year to deal a negative punch to people.

And again, this is an election year and last year wasn’t. Both WWIII and a possible second US Civil War are becoming more and more realistic this year than they were last year. Fear is high while optimism is low.

Lastly, have you heard a single person at all this year talk about how excited they are for the WSOP? I haven’t. Not one. Not on this forum, not in real life, nowhere. Obviously, there are some people who are excited, especially first-timers. But the thrill is just empty this year. ESPN jumped ship a few years back and viewership isn’t nearly what it used to be. Shoot, even the production quality of the broadcast has diminished.

Will they still have a large turnout? Sure. Will they spin data to fit their narrative? Of course. But I really do believe that this year will be a sudden turning point for the WSOP as well as poker as a whole.

On the other hand, it’s 2:00 am and I’m battling my first (and hopefully last) ever kidney stone so I’ve been heavily medicated the last 5-6 days and operating off of virtually zero sleep so I’m rambling and possibly making zero sense.

Participation numbers are obviously inflated by the huge number of events and lower buy-ins. That said, the Main Event had over 10k runners last year. That's not a made up number.

I just don't think this was a very good weekend for a big tournament. Mother's day is a huge factor but also with the upcoming WSOP and Memorial Day weekend where significantly more people are going to travel.

My hot take is that this could be a reflection of micro economic factors, not a reflection of people's attitudes towards poker.

Despite the macro-economic number showing quarterly job growth, Austin has been hit pretty hard with tech layoffs.

https://www.statesman.com/story/busi...r/73099000007/

https://www.statesman.com/story/busi...e/73330471007/

https://www.mysanantonio.com/busines...s-18698990.php

I had a few more links to post from the Stateman but i kept getting redirected to the paywall.

Even my nephew, who lives in the area and plays poker, has been laid off. Reports of Google, VMWare, etc all laying off people in the area.

Austin's real estate market has been downgraded from a sellers market to neutral.

https://www.texasstandard.org/storie...et-decreasing/

I also recall hearing Oracle is relocating it's HQ to Nashville from Austin.

https://www.axios.com/local/austin/2...move-nashville

Many areas of Texas have been booming for several years now... it's natural that boom towns tend to go bust from time to time.

I don't disagree with some of the things Dr. Meh said though.

Didn't Polk post something about there being no parking or they couldn't access the parking lot or something weird?

If people would follow Dave Ramey's principles, a recession/inflation would not be the end of the world. While not ideal, it certainly won't change ones day to day living situation. Anyway, I am super excited about the upcoming WSOP! It is something I look forward to every year.

As for the overlay, kudos to Doug and his team for not doing what so many other rooms do (adding flights, discounting buy-ins, etc...). I do think this will make them reconsider their guarantees from here on out. I wish my city had a card room like Austin/Round Rock. The closest poker room to me is an hour and twenty minutes away.

I was shocked at how little borgata has had in the way of tournaments since COVID but that they chose Mother's Day weekend to have a 2700 dollar main event for their series.



As a kid I remember we used to always have little league games on Father's Day. None of the dads cared. One year they decided to schedule games on Mother's Day and that was the last year they tried that debacle.

The Borgata room is also just a shell of itself with how poorly its run in general so it wouldn't shock me if they make the same mistake next year.

Probably too close to WSOP. No one feels the FOMO itch to go out of their way to jump into this.

Huh? Yes it is. Not sure which planet you are living on but within the last year, home, auto, credit card, small business loans, etc. have been the highest they have been in the last 25 years. So yes, the 'cost of borrowing' is quite high right now.

Also, if you look at Credit Card delinquency rates by state... Texas is #4.

https://wallethub.com/edu/credit-car...y-state/134516

Credit Card charge off rates are starting to approach 2008 levels. You can find this data on the federal reserve's website.

That doesn’t mean sky high. QE is over. Deal with it

The cost of borrowing is whatever the fed sets it at

The cost of borrowing and then lending for profit is different.

Our fed rate is not sky high. You are used to a dirt low rate. It wasn’t real. Kiss it goodbye

Very interesting that you bring this up as I have been thinking the same thing all year - usually people on social media are hyped up talking about the WSOP and excited for it to come but I haven't seen much of anything outside people who get paid to talk about the WSOP or the ones who gain the most from WSOP being an authority.

I have to imagine most of the rec players are still hyped up to come to play it but I'm not seeing that online. The old WSOP guard who hyped up the event on the player side every year isn't as active in poker as it used to be. Ambassadors like Hellmuth and Daniel are some of the main drivers of perception of the WSOP because of ESPN and them being still super active is GTO for WSOP brand. They need to find their next generation of partners like to keep elevating the brand if they want it to be known as the top of the top in USA.

The energy around poker is feeling very different right now with all the new poker options for shows, events, creators, and platforms to find it all.

Haven't looked into your claims of data manipulation but pretty common for most companies to lie with statistics that favor the narrative they want to push.