It’s been revealed that the 2016 World Series of Poker attracted a record number of entries, with a massive 107,833 players attending the tournament this year. The number is up over four percent compared to last year’s record-setting tournament which managed to attract 103,512 entries.
This was just the second time in the long history of the WSOP that over 100,000 entries were attracted. There was a whopping $221,211,336 in prize money awarded this year.
The total of $221,211,336 in prize money that was awarded to winners at the WSOP this year was the third highest figure of all time. It came in behind the 2012 and 2014 tournaments, when there was a $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop tournament on the schedule. 2016 became the 12th year in a row that the series created a total prize pool across all events of more than $100,000,000 and it was the fourth time that it overcame $200,000,000.
15,767 of the 107,833 entries tallied across all events placed in events. There were 69 official gold bracelet events on the schedule, and $555,475 was the average first-place prize at an event. The 2016 WSOP Main Event managed to attracted 6,737 entries, up nearly 5% over last year’s figure of 6,420. The top 1,011 places were paid out— a record for the world’s biggest poker tournament — and first place prize was set at $8,000,000. A number of new records were set at the 2016 event – including most entries, most cashers, largest single starting flight in Main Event history, and the largest non-hold’em live tournament field size ever.
The average age of a series participant was roughly 41 years old, the same as last year’s average age. Men were overwhelmingly the bulk of entries, with 94.87 percent of the fields at the 2016 series, while women accounted for just over 5%. Last year, those numbers were 94.56 percent and 5.43 percent, respectively. Players from the USA were the biggest group of event, accounting for over 84,000 entries, or 78%. Last year, players from the United States represented 82,439 entries, or 79.64 percent. Poker players from Canada made up the second largest group of participants.
Prizes were individually awarded to players that included Jason Mercier (Player of the Year) and Roland Israelashvili. Israelashvili set a new record for most cashes in a single summer WSOP with 13. With that, Israelashvili also tied the record for most WSOP cashes in a year. Joe Cada (who won the 2009 WSOP Main Event for $8,546,435), became the 10th place to surpass $10,000,000 in WSOP earnings. He cashes six times in 2016 for $57,242 total. His best finish was an 11th-place result in the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo for $27,804.