Biggest WSOP Fields

His statements proved pretty accurate. The 1974 Main Event had only 16 players, but 1975 had 21. And his longer-term prediction came true when 54 players entered the 1979 Main Event.

What he couldn't have predicted was that the growth would continue almost steadily for three full decades. And even then, it didn't stop. It exploded. Chris Moneymaker's truth-is-stranger-than-fiction world championship in 2003 fueled spectacular jumps from 839 to 2,576 to 5,619 to 8,773 entrants.

Only then did the crowds finally ease off, settling into the six-to-seven thousand player range for the last decade.

Fields, especially in lower-buyin events, continued setting new records, and the number of tournaments keeps rising. Some of the milestones include:

• 1980: Events 1 ($500 Seven-Card Stud), 2 ($1,000 No-Limit Hold 'Em), and 7 ($1,500 No-Limit Hold 'Em) see fields of 176, 138, and 126 respectively, the first WSOP tournaments with more than 100 players.
• 1982: The Main Event breaks the 100 mark with 104 players.
• 1995: The $1,500 Limit Hold 'Em event tops 500 with 560 players.
• 2000: The Main Event passes 500 with 512 players.
• 2004: The Main Event soars past 1,000, 2,000, and 2,500 players with 2,576.
• 2005: The Main Event exceeds 5,000 with 5,619 players.
• 2015: The $565 Colossus glides by 10,000, 15,000, and 20,000 with 14,284 players who re-enter 8,090 times for a total of 22,374 entries.
• 2019: The $500 No-Limit Hold 'Em "Big 50" easily surpasses the 25,000 barrier with 28,371 players.
• 2020: The $50 No-Limit Hold 'Em "Big 50", featuring the smallest buyin in WSOP history, cruises past the 30,000 and 40,000 marks with 44,576 players. All 2020 events need an asterisk, however, as they were contested online.
• 2022: The online $210 No-Limit Hold 'Em Mystery Millions tops the 50,000 mark with 51,003 players.
• 2023: The Main Event breaks into five digits with 10,043 players.
• 2024: The Main Event includes a record 10,112 players.

Different games have come in and out of fashion, which is reflected in the history of the largest fields:

Notes:

• The 2019 $500 Big 50 remains the largest live event.

Limit Hold 'Em's run ended in 2003; the biggest fields have all been in No-Limit Hold 'Em events since then:

Notes:

• Each of the ten largest WSOP fields has come in the last decade and the top 9 in the last six years.
• The largest non-Hold 'Em WSOP event, the 2021 Online $400 PLOssus Bounty, had 4,576 players (ahead of the same event in 2020 with 4,356 players and the 2022 running with 3,850).
• The largest live non-Hold 'Em WSOP event was the 2024 $1,000 Mystery Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha with 4,280 entries. easily surpassing the one-year old record of 3,200 set by the 2023 $600 Pot-Limit Omaha Deepstack 8-Max.
• The largest non-Hold 'Em, non-Omaha event, the 2012 $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. had 889 players, well outside the top 400.
• The largest field outside of the U.S. was the 4,115 who played in the €550 No-Limit Hold 'Em in 2017. The first WSOP Europe event had 410 players in 2008, 608 showed up for a later event that year, 771 in 2011, 1,086 for a WSOP Asia-Pacific tourney in 2013, and 2,144 for a 2015 WSOP Europe event (all No-Limit Hold 'Em).