The 2023 World Series of Poker is now just a memory, as poker’s premier festival wrapped up at Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas on July 19, 2023.
A jam-packed schedule saw 95 bracelet events play out at the WSOP’s home, with several obliterating all kinds of attendance and prize pool records.
So, if you weren’t able to keep up with all the action from the last two months, then PokerNews has got you covered with this complete overview of the 2023 WSOP.
This article focuses on just the live events from the 2023 WSOP. You can see the complete overview of the NV/NJ online bracelet events here.
2023 World Series of Poker Hub
Bookmark this page! All you need to know about the 2023 WSOP is here.
Plenty of Bullets Fired
Across the 95 live bracelet events, there were 215,655 entries recorded from players in all corners of the world.
The most attended event also had the lowest buy-in. The $300 Gladiators of Poker had 23,088 entries to make it one of the biggest poker tournaments of all time.
In addition to the Gladiators, there were four more tournaments that had more than 10,000 entries.
Over $440 Million Collected
From the entries mentioned above, a whopping $440,562,594 was collected across the 2023 WSOP. To put that into perspective, that’s more than the GDP of countries such as Nauru ($133.2M), Palau ($217.8M), Marshall Islands ($259.5M), and Federated Islands of Micronesia ($404M).
From the money collected, $401,837,583 was available in prizes, while the remaining $38,925,011 was portioned for the rake. The WSOP then splits the rake into two categories. The first being entry fees, which had a final total of $27,247,508. This left over $11,677,503, which was then divided between the dealers and staff.
Across the summer, $66,286,689 was allocated to the bracelet winners. There were 15 events that awarded at least $1 million to the eventual champions, and then there were a further two $1 million prizes given out thanks to the bounty prizes from the Mystery Millions.
Record-Breaking Main Event
One of the biggest stories from the summer was that the 2023 WSOP Main Event finally eclipsed the 2006 entry record.
Some 10,043 hopefuls paid the $10,000 buy-in to set up the biggest Main Event of all time. Of course, this generated the largest prize pool in the history of poker, with $93,399,900 being shared among the 1,508 players to finish in the money.
Daniel Weinman was the last player standing and saw $12.1 million head his way after he etched his name in poker’s history books. His payout bested the prize that was awarded to Jamie Gold during the first poker boom.
Miller, Eveslage, Brewer & Arieh Pick Up Multiple Bracelets
Winning one bracelet at the WSOP is cool, but winning two? That’s just too good.
The 2023 WSOP saw four players bag multiple bracelet wins with Ryan Miller, Chris Brewer (pictured), Chad Eveslage, and Josh Arieh being in that in that quartet.
Eveslage kicked off the 2023 WSOP in incredible form and picked up back-to-back bracelet triumphs in the Dealer’s Choice events. He won the $1,500 edition before reigning supreme in the Dealer’s Choice Championship for a combined score of $443,307.
Bad beat specialist Brewer has experienced some sick bust-outs over the last few years in some huge spots, but he was able to see the warmer side of lady luck over the last couple of months. Brewer won the biggest buy-in event of the series and took home $5,293,556 for his $250K Super High Roller victory. He then showed he was more than just a hold’em maestro as he grabbed his second win in the $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Single Draw Lowball Championship.
As expected, poker players from the United States collected the most WSOP bracelets across the summer, with 58 different Americans all finding a pole position finish. Phil Hellmuth was one of those to finish an event in the top spot, and he extended his all-time bracelet record to 17 after he took down Event #72: $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty for $803,818.
Canadian and Chinese-based players were able to capture six bracelets each. The Brazilian crowd also turned out in force and proved once again that they’re a poker force to be reckoned with as three more bracelets were taken back to the South American state.
Bulgaria had two champions, while Switzerland, Japan, Moldova, Poland, Austria, Spain, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Vietnam, Peru, France, Australia, Argentina, Netherlands, Germany, and Portugal had one winner each.
2023 WSOP By the Numbers
Event
Buy-in
Entries
USD Collected
Prize Pool
Rake
Entry Fees
Dealers & Staff
Winner
First Place Prize
Event #1: $500 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em
$500
1,015
$507,500
$426,300
$81,200
$56,840
$24,360
Peter Thai
$75,535
Event #2: $25,000 High Roller Six Handed No-Limit Hold’em
$25,000
207
$5,175,000
$4,864,500
$310,500
$217,350
$93,150
Alexandre Vuilleumier
$1,215,864
Event #3: $1,000 Mystery Millions – No-Limit Hold’em
Calum has been a part of the PokerNews team since September 2021 after working in the UK energy sector. He played his first hand of poker in 2017 and immediately fell in love with the game. Calum’s proudest poker achievement is winning the only tournament he has ever played in Las Vegas, the prestigious $60 Flamingo evening event.