Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAPAN AUG 2019 48 For players the world over, this is Mecca – the spiritual home of poker complete with its own annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Las Vegas. 世界中のプレイヤーにとってここは聖地だ。ポーカープレーヤーの旅は、心の 故郷、聖なる都市ラスベガスへの年に一度の巡礼の旅で完結する。 IN FOCUS takes all series of cash games at the Horseshoe Casino, this year’s WSOP smashed all previous records with 187,298 entries across the expansive 89-event schedule. The 2019 WSOP Main Event – without doubt the Holy Grail of poker – saw a massive 8,569 players stump up the US$10,000 entry fee, second only to the 8,773 who sat down for the 2006 Main Event at the very peak of the global poker boom. So big that it fills three full conference spaces – known as the Pavilion, Amazon and Brasilia rooms – there were this year a total of 519 poker tables in play. And a litany of records fell by the wayside too: a 51% year-on-year increase in the total number of entries series-wide, the most prize money ever awarded with a combined US$293 million, 62 events with US$1 million- plus prize pools and 12 separate events with fields of 5,000 or more. The numbers, coming at a time when there have never been so many live events for players around the world to choose from, are stunning and a testimony to the unique legacy this one-of-a-kind spectacle has created. “Fifty years is a long time for any company to be in business but we are fortunate at the World Series of Poker that our founding was so long ago and was the first of its kind in this industry,” explains WSOP Vice- President of Corporate Communications, Seth Palansky. “The WSOP has a legacy and the trust of the players, which are important components.” For the players, the great attraction of the WSOP is its rich history steeped in mystique. The WSOP Main Event is the tournament where more legends have been created than in all other tournaments combined: from “The Grand Old Man of Poker” Johnny Moss who took down the first two renditions in 1970 and 1971 (against six and seven opponents respectively) to Doyle Brunson who did the same in 1976 and 1977, Stu Ungar in 1980 and 1981 and the great Johnny Chan who not only beat fields of 152 and 167 to win back-to-back Main Event titles in 1987 and 1988 but came within a whisker of making it three in a row when he finished runner-up to Phil Hellmuth in 1989. For the record, Chan finished 560th in this year’s Main Event for a US$24,560 payday. The WSOP was also the scene of the single most