It’s a Wrap – The 2023 WSOP in Review
The 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) is now complete, and it was a massive one. Records were being broken right from the beginning of the series with events breaking attendance records almost from the opening day. In total, more than 210,000 entries were recorded throughout the various events in this year's WSOP combining for more than $405 million in total prizes awarded from the live game component of the WSOP. The big record, of course, came when the 2006 record for Main Event entries was smashed a day before entries closed, and in the end crushed the previous record.
There were four players who won more than one bracelet this year, with Chad Eveslage starting things off early by winning both the Dealers Choice events in the opening week of play. He was joined by three others, including Josh Arieh who picked up #5 and #6 this year.
Representatives of 24 different nations managed to pick up bracelets in this series, including at least a couple of first-timers with Peru and the Faroe Islands recording their first-ever bracelets this series. Six of the 24 nations with bracelets managed to win more than one through the course of the 2023 Series.
Records Broken in 2023
The main takeaway from the 2023 WSOP when the dust settles and the analysis begins will almost certainly be "Holy, that was a big one!" The 2023 edition of the series was the biggest ever with multiple events breaking their previous attendance and prize pool records, not least of which was the Main Event itself.
But the massive fields started long before the Main Event was even a twinkle in the players' eyes. The third event of the series was the wildly popular new Mystery Bounty format, and when the dust settled there were more than 18,000 entries in the game for one of the biggest fields on record for the WSOP. There was more than $16 million to play for in this one, with the winner set to get $1 million. The game originally had a guarantee of a $1 million Mystery Bounty as well going into the action, but by the time the massive field was set, there was enough money in the pot to add a second $1 million bounty to the barrel. Shant Marashlian and Patrick Liang both bagged $1 million from the bounty barrel, while Tyler Brown took the $1 million win.
There were five different games that ended up with 10,000 total entries or more, including the biggest Main Event ever, but one game even blew past 20,000 entries. Over four opening flights, the Gladiators of Poker event (#18) saw an astonishing 23,102 entries for the biggest field of the series and more than $9 million in prizes for a $300 entry. The Mystery Millions (#3), the Colossus (#70), and the Millionaire Maker (#53) were the other games that, along with the Main Event, pushed into five-digit field sizes.
There were six games in the series that played for $10 million or more in the total prize pool. Of course, the top of the list was the Main Event with an astonishing $93 million in prizes, the biggest Main Event prize pool ever by about $11 million, but the Mystery Millions, the Milly, and the Monster joined a couple of High Roller games with eight-digit prize pools.
Monster Main Event
The jewel in the WSOP crown is always the Main Event and this year proved no exception. With four starting days, and entries open for two levels on Day 2, the stage was set for the biggest Main Event ever, and the Big Show went ahead with no hitches. When the dust settled on entries, not only did this year's event break the 2006 record of 8,773 entries, it smashed it with more than 10,000 total entries. That put the Main Event prizes this year at $93,399,900, almost $11 million ahead of the $82,512,162 from 2006.
Jamie Gold won that 2006 Main Event for a prize of $12 million, also a record at the time. That record has now been eclipsed with the $12.1 million winner's prize from the 2023 event, won by Daniel Weinman. Casual fans may wonder why the 2023 top prize was only $100k more than Gold's big win in 2006 when the total prizes are $11 million more - the answer comes from changes to MTT payout structures over the years that take more money out of the top spots to add to the bottom, reducing the size of the winner's paycheck but increasing the number of players who walk away with some cash.
In 2006, the tournament paid out 10% of the field for a total of 873 paid spots and the minimum cash set at just $10,616, barely the buy-in back. By contrast, 2023 had 15% of the field paid for a total of 1,507 paid spots with the min-cash set at $15,000. Given those differences, it's easy to see why the extra $11 million in total prizes only amounted to an extra $100k for this year's winner.
Among the feel-good stories of the series was Cody Daniels. Daniels is terminally ill after a lifetime of medical problems and was living his dream by getting a shot at the WSOP Main Event. The colorful player collapsed on the way back to his seat after a break as the bubble approached, causing a short stoppage of play while medical staff checked him over. He was deemed fit to continue playing as he had just over-exerted himself trying to get back to his seat before play began again. He was able to recover and went on to book a pretty decent cash worth $30,000 for 635th place.
Throughout the tournament, Daniels was using his "pet rock" as a card protector, and when he busted, he passed it on to the player who busted him, requesting that it continue to be passed on until the final table. Sure enough, when the final hands were being played, Daniels' pet rock was still in action, protecting the cards of the eventual winner Weinman.
That feeling when i realize my pet rock has more final tables and bracelets then me 😂🪨 pic.twitter.com/oCu6syw51D
— Cody Daniels (@CodyDaniels88) July 20, 2023
Player of the Year - Ian Matakis
In the end, there wasn't much of a race for the Player of the Year this year. Oftentimes, the PoY race comes down to the final few events with several players in close contention for the win depending on results in a few final games. This year, however, it was clear fairly early on that Ian Matakis was running away with the race. In the earliest looks at the race, Chad Eveslage took the early lead with two bracelets in the opening week, but Matakis quickly came on with a steady, consistent performance throughout the series.
The fact that Matakis only won a single bracelet this year, and it was in an early online event, produced some inevitable controversy from "old-school" players who view online bracelets as lower value than live bracelets with players like Mike Matusow and Allen Kessler taking to Twitter to question the formula used to calculate PoY as a result of Matakis' win. Interestingly, runner-up and perennial PoY candidate Shaun Deeb played defense for Matakis in the threads and noting that his second-place results, along with many of his previous strong finishes in the race, were also on the back of many online cashes.
You do understand chance and brewer also had a lot of cashes online and a ft or two right
— shaun deeb (@shaundeeb) July 19, 2023
Wherever you land on the live versus online debate, under the current PoY formula, Matakis didn't just win the title this year, but fully crushed it. On the strength of 22 total cashes including a bracelet and six top-nine finishes he ended the series with 5,203.89 points in the PoY race. That was almost 1,000 points ahead of runner-up Deeb who posted 4,276.12 points from 24 cashes and four top-nine finishes including one bracelet. For Deeb, 11 of those results came from online events, while Matakis booked nine online cashes in his point total. Chris Brewer was third in the points race, about 100 behind Deeb with 12 cashes that included two bracelets and one online cash.
While the debate about online bracelets and results is unlikely to be settled any time soon, both of the top two players in the PoY race scored more live cashes in this series than the double-bracelet winner Brewer in 3rd and more than double the total cahses when online results are considered. See below for a look at the top-ten players from this year's Player of the Year race.
| Place | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ian Matakis | 5,203.89 |
| 2 | Shaun Deeb | 4,276.12 |
| 3 | Christopher Brewer | 4,127.61 |
| 4 | Josh Arieh | 3,938.62 |
| 5 | Jesse Lonis | 3,865.70 |
| 6 | Michael Rodrigues Pires Santos | 3,513.21 |
| 7 | Chad Eveslage | 3,447.63 |
| 8 | Yuri Dzivielevski | 3,382.33 |
| 9 | Ben Yu | 3,128.08 |
| 10 | Phil Hellmuth | 3,072.14 |
Multiple Winners and Top Bracelets
There were four players this year to win two bracelets during the series. The first one happened in the first week of the series when Chad Eveslage crushed both of the early Dealers Choice events for his second and third bracelets. Josh Arieh was next up, taking his first one down early in the series in Event #22 and bagging his second later on in the $25k HORSE.
Chris Brewer, who was third in the Player of the Year race behind Shaun Deeb and Ian Matakis, also won two and he did it at completely different ends of the poker spectrum. His first bracelet this year came in the Super High Roller event around mid-series, while his second came in the $10k Single Draw. The final double-bracelet winner this year came late in the series when Ryan Miller turned up the heat by first winning the $10k Stud8 Championship and following that up with a win in the $3k HORSE.
One interesting story to come out of Arieh's double-win this year was the friendly rivalry he has with Shaun Deeb. After Arieh won his fifth bracelet, Deeb made a friendly wager that he'd get his sixth before Arieh. He made good on that promise a few days later, scoring his sixth lifetime win at the WSOP with his only bracelet this year in the $1,500 8-Game Mix. Not to be outdone, however, Arieh then stepped it up again to bag his second of the series and pull level with his friend once again.
Rast Takes Third PPC Title and Earns HoF Nod
One of the other big bracelet stories of the series came from Brian Rast. He went into the Poker Players Championship this year with two previous wins, and he was one of a few players looking for their third win this year. One of the others in that camp was two-time defending champion Daniel "Jungleman" Cates, who arrived for the game in full Terminator cosplay, but ended up terminated himself before the money spots, bringing his attempt at three on the trot to an end.
Rast, on the other hand, was still alive on his quest to join Michael Mizrachi as the only three-time winner of the prestigious event and he was able to make good on the quest and joined The Grinder in the three-timers club. That also cemented the prevailing wisdom of the year that the Hall of Fame nod would also go Rast's way this year.
While the PPC win likely didn't play a huge part in the final analysis, it was a reminder of just how good a poker player Rast has been over his career. After winning his second bracelet this year, Josh Arieh was asked about his own HoF chances, and he was characteristically humble but pointed directly to Rast as the player who deserved the nod this year.
White Magic for #17
Phil Hellmuth is running out of fingers and toes to count all his bracelets on after winning his record-breaking 17th bracelet this year. It's hard to even know where to start when talking about The Poker Brat's WSOP performance over the decades, as 7 bracelets more than his closest competitors is just the beginning of his accomplishments at the annual poker festival.
The players he is close to lapping in the bracelet race are among the greatest names in the game - Chan, Brunson, Ivey - so it's not like he's crushing fields of nobodies either. Since his inaugural win in the 1989 Main when he famously stopped Johnny Chan's run for three in a row, Hellmuth has managed to book at least two bracelets in each of the last four decades with #17 marking his second this decade.
While he is still looking for his second Vegas Main Event title some 34 years after he won his first, he is the only player in the history of the game to win both versions of the Main Event. While the WSOP was strictly a Las Vegas affair for the earliest years of its existence, as the poker boom spread across the world following Chris Moneymaker's epic 2003 win, the WSOP expanded its horizons with an international series that alternated between Europe and Asia, including its own version of the Main Event. In 2012, 23 years after he won the Vegas Main, Hellmuth bagged the Main Event in the World Series of Poker Europe and he is still the only player with both those titles to his name.
While he started his career as a hold'em specialist, it's worth noting that Hellmuth has expanded his poker horizons through the years, and lately is seen winning bracelets in games like razz and deuce as often as hold'em. His latest bracelet took him back to his roots though, and perhaps surprisingly, came in a bigger-field turbo bounty format.
Perhaps most terrifying for the players sitting on ten bracelets or less looking at Hellmuth's ass in the distance, he shows no signs of slowing down in his late 50s with two bracelets already in his fifth decade at the top of the game. While it's always dangerous to predict "unbeatable" records in any activity, the widening gap between Hellmuth and his very tough competition is hard to ignore, especially so since he apparently still seems to be going as strong as ever.
National Bracelet Results
When the WSOP comes to Las Vegas, there is rarely any drama at the top of the bracelet counts as host country USA always crushes the totals. 2023 was no different with American players bagging 59 of the 95 available live bracelets this year. But even with the US far out in front, there is almost always a tight race for second place in the national bracelet standings.
This year, the battle for second was between Canada and China with the two countries running neck-to-neck through most of the series. In the end, Canada came on strong with two bracelets in the final week of the series to just nip ahead of China at the wire for second place with six total bracelets to the Asian behemoth's five. Brazil (3), Bulgaria (2), and Germany (2) also bagged more than one bracelet this year leading a total of 24 nations with one bracelet or more. Both the Faroe Islands (Martin Nielsen in E93) and Peru (Diego Ventura in E86) bagged their first bracelets ever this year.
| Country | Bracelets | 1st Place Prize Totals |
|---|---|---|
| USA | 59 | $43,154,536 |
| Canada | 6 | $2,270,188 |
| China | 5 | $2,922,865 |
| Brazil | 3 | $901,821 |
| Bulgaria | 2 | $2,522,997 |
| Germany | 2 | $2,221,299 |
| Argentina | 1 | $190,240 |
| Australia | 1 | $598,613 |
| Austria | 1 | $371,603 |
| Faroe Islands | 1 | $270,760 |
| France | 1 | $1,057,663 |
| Hong Kong | 1 | $2,294,756 |
| Israel | 1 | $501,120 |
| Japan | 1 | $221,124 |
| Moldova | 1 | $1,201,564 |
| Netherlands | 1 | $2,576,729 |
| Peru | 1 | $402,054 |
| Poland | 1 | $155,275 |
| Portugal | 1 | $144,678 |
| Spain | 1 | $682,436 |
| Switzerland | 1 | $1,215,864 |
| Ukraine | 1 | $164,835 |
| United Kingdom | 1 | $311,428 |
| Vietnam | 1 | $111,170 |
And We're Out!
That brings the 2023 WSOP to a final close and what a year it was! Records were broken across the series with the biggest Main Event ever highlighting the show while players like Brian Rast, Phil Hellmuth, Ian Matakis, and Josh Arieh, among others, cemented their positiions at the top of the game in various ways. There were close calls from OG legends with Phil Ivey and Johnny Chan both sniffing at their 11th bracelets this year and others like Mike Matusow, Billy Baxter, and Barny Boatman (who had to contend with a practical joking Patrick Leonard pretending to be him in some games) all had shots at hardware this year.
No matter how you slice this pie, the 2023 WSOP will go down in the history books as the biggest and best series to date, but the post-pandemic boom only points to the game getting bigger in the coming years.
