6,420 Players Turn Out for 2015 WSOP Main Event

This year’s WSOP Main Event may have gotten off to its slowest start in years, but the rest of the starting flights made up for that. In fact, the last starting flight of the event, Day 1C, had the largest ever turnout for a starting flight at a WSOP Main Event.

Total of 3,963 players showed up on the final starting flight, which brought the total number of entrants to 6,420. While that was lower than last year’s turnout, it was slightly higher than the field of 6,352 that showed up at the 2013 Main Event.

4,389 players made the cut for the Day 2 after everything was said and done, and competition is set to be even fiercer on the second day of play as only the top 1,000 players will be in the money at this year’s event.

John Gorsuch will enter Day 2 as the overall chip leader, with a stack of 198,100 to his name. He will be followed by Zarik Megerdichian, who has a stack of 180,400 chips going into the second day of play.

Ryan Riess, who won the 2013 WSOP Main Event, has also put himself into good shape going into Day 2. He finished Day 1 with 108,800, which gives him enough ammunition to do well over the rest of the event.

Actors Brad Garrett and Ray Romano, who played brothers on the hit TV sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, also made the cut to Day 2, with 46,050 and 33,375 chips respectively.

Day 2a will get underway tomorrow and will feature those from Day 1a and 1b who made the cut to the second play of play. Day 2b is set to get underway on Friday and will feature the players who survived Day 1c.

The prize pool distribution for this year’s Main Event was also released during the third starting flight. The lowest amount an ‘in the money’ player will take home will be US$15,000. The top 63 players will see themselves earning at least six figures, with US$113,764 going to the players who finish between 55th and 63rd.

Ninth place, which will be the first player to be knocked out of the final table, will stand to get an extra US$1,001,020 in their bank account.

The runner up at this year’s event will leave with US$4,469,171, a highly respectable amount by most measures.

However, that payout is over US$3.2 million less than the anticipated payout for the winner, who stands to get $7,680,021.