After the tumultuous events of the 2000s, the next decade would prove to be one of relatively steady growth for the World Series of Poker, and one that would set the scene for the record-breaking period we're now enjoying.
While it would take more than 10 years for Main Event (ME) participation to reach the levels of 2006, the numbers were still big with each year recording over 6,000 ME entrants. 7,319 players ponied up the $10K to play the first ME of the decade, as 2010 saw Jonathan Duhamel become the first Canadian champion. Duhamel came into the final table - once again postponed until November as part of the ‘November Nine’ era - as the chip leader with 30% of the chips in play, and rode his big stack all the way to the finish line.
One final table hopeful who couldn’t quite get there was Michael Mizrachi, who finished in fifth. The player known as ‘The Grinder’ had earlier in the summer picked up a bracelet, and the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy, in the $50K Poker Players’ Championship (PPC) - the tourney previously known as the $50K HORSE, having had a few new games added to the rotation and thus renamed. Another Mizrachi, Robert, also made the final table of the PPC, while all four Mizrachi siblings (including Eric and Daniel) cashed in the ME.
Robert and Michael’s duel at the final table was only the third time in WSOP history that siblings had both made it so deep in the same tournament. Annie Duke and Howard Lederer had competed for the Pot-Limit Hold’em event in 1995, while Barny and Ross Boatman had both final-tabled a PLO tourney in 2002.
More new faces, more coverage
In 2011 coverage of the WSOP was awarded to Poker PROductions, the company run by Mori Eskandani of High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark fame. Suddenly, many more tournaments found their way to screens across the world, with 55 events streamed near-live.
In the winners’ circle a number of new names were being feted, with the likes of Jake Cody, Andre Akkari, Jason Somerville and Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier landing their first bracelets. Brian Rast also won his first and second bracelets, including defeating Phil Hellmuth heads-up for the PPC.
The 6,865 players in the ME once again boiled down to nine who returned in November for the final table. After an epic climax which lasted over 300 hands - 119 of them heads-up - Germany’s Pius Heinz scooped the $8.7M up top.
That would be one of the biggest poker prizes ever seen, but it was dwarfed by the payday enjoyed by Antonio Esfandiari at the 2012 WSOP. The man known as ‘The Magician’ won The Big One For One Drop - a $1M buy-in tournament with all fees donated to charity. Esfandiari won $18.3M, and the One Drop charity raised $7.2M.
That year’s ME was won by Greg Merson, who outran a field of 6,598 to bank $8.5M. Merson, who had been rock bottom of the chip counts with over 130 players left, had already earned his stripes that summer with victory in the $10K 6-Max NLHE event, and so deservedly claimed the Player of the Year award for 2012.
Back-to-back deep runs for Newhouse
2013 saw a first bracelet win for, among others, Loni Harwood - a top 10 player on the Women’s All-Time Money List - while Mike Matusow picked up his most recent WSOP win in the $5K Stud Hi/Lo event. Matusow would also make it to heads-up in the PPC, finishing second to the UK’s Matthew Ashton, who reached four final tables over the summer series. Barny Boatman also picked up his first piece of WSOP jewelry, defeating Brian O’Donoghue in a three-hour heads-up finale to the $1.5K NLHE event.
6,352 players entered the ME that year, which was won by Ryan Riess in the November Nine for $8.3M. The final table included bracelet-winners JC Tran and Amir Lehavot, but among the also-rans was one more notable name: Mark Newhouse.
Newhouse made a deep run which ended in 9th place, but that’s not the remarkable part. That came the following year in 2014, when he somehow replicated his achievement and finished 9th in the ME once again. Having outlasted all but 8 of the 6,352 players in 2013, he did the same in 2014 in a field of 6,683.
Martin Jacobson won the big one that year for $10M, defeating Felix Stephenson heads-up. The story goes that Norway’s Stephenson only traveled to Las Vegas to play the ME after a lucky winning bet in the football World Cup, correctly predicting that the Netherlands would beat Australia exactly 3-2, at odds of 60-1.
2014 also saw the return of the Big One for One Drop, in which Daniel Colman beat Daniel Negreanu for a cool $13.5M. Elsewhere, Phil Ivey won the $1.5K 8-game event, George Danzer won three bracelets, and all-time money winner Bryn Kenney won his - to date - only piece of WSOP hardware in the $1.5K 10-game mix.
A close call for Negreanu
2015 brought a new event to the schedule that made major waves: The Colossus. This $565 tourney set a new record for the biggest field in a live tournament with 22,374 entries. Other firsts this year included debut wins for players including Shaun Deeb, Benny Glaser, Nick Petrangelo and Anthony Zinno, as well as the first bounty tournament at the WSOP, the first super seniors’ event and the series’ first online bracelet.
Former world champion Jonathan Duhamel won the High Roller for One Drop - a $111,111 tourney - while Tuan Le achieved the unlikely by winning the $10K 2-7 Triple Draw Championship for the second year running.
6,420 players entered the Main Event, including Daniel Negreanu and eventual winner Joe McKeehen. Negreanu made it almost all the way to the November Nine, falling in 11th, while McKeehen won $7.6M for achieving global domination. It wouldn’t be the first time: after all, he was a former world champion at the board game Risk.
2016 saw the Colossus return, with 21,613 players duking it out. Players including Andrew ‘LuckyChewy’ Lichtenberger, David Peters and Fedor Holz won their first WSOP events, and the tag-team event returned for the first time since 1983, won by Doug Polk and Ryan Fee. Jason Mercier won two events on his way to the Player of the Year title.
Qui Nguyen won the ME, outlasting the field of 6,737 and taking the $8M top prize in the last incarnation of the November Nine. He used the break between the summer series and the fall conclusion to train using computer simulations of his final table opponents, which included Kenny Hallaert and Griffin Benger. No future champions would have the chance to prepare in this way again, as the November Nine concept was retired.
No more November Nine
The days of delaying the ME final table were over in 2017, as Main Event participation rose above 7,000 players for the first time since the start of the decade.
Of the 7,221 entries, Scott Blumstein was the last one standing for the $8.1M up top. The talented final nine included former final tablists Antoine Saout (2009) and Ben Lamb (2011), as well as future WSOP champion Damien Salas (2020).
2017 also saw more side events than ever before, with 73 chances to pick up a bracelet. These included a new event, The Giant, which at $365 provided players with the most affordable opportunity to win a WSOP title to date. Three online bracelets were also awarded, while Doug Polk defeated ElkY in the High Roller for One Drop and former WSOP champ Joe McKeehen picked up the $10K Limit Hold’em bracelet.
Player of the Year was awarded to Chris Ferguson, ruffling some feathers in the poker community due to the ill-feeling many harbored over Ferguson’s involvement in the Full Tilt collapse earlier in the decade.
On the rise again
Numbers began to grow once more for the last two Main Events of the decade; 7,874 turned out in 2018, and 8,569 in 2019. The 2018 ME was streamed live in its entirety, as was the Big One for One Drop, in which Justin Bonomo beat Fedor Holz for a $10M payday. The year also saw Michael Addamo and Jean-Robert Bellande pick up their first bracelets, while Phil Hellmuth won his 15th.
Shaun Deeb picked up the trophy for WSOP Player of the Year in 2018, with two wins over the summer. Former champion Joe Cada also picked up two wins and ran deep in the ME, finishing 5th. John Cynn ended up winning the big one, and $8.8M, after an epic heads-up marathon with Tony Miles which lasted over 10 hours.
The final WSOP of the decade in 2019 marked the series’ 50th anniversary. There were 90 events on the schedule, including a first Short Deck tourney, and all NLHE events used the big blind ante format. Big-time players Stephen Chidwick and Ari Engel won their first bracelets, and Australia’s Robert Campbell pipped Shaun Deeb and Daniel Negreanu to the Player of the Year title.
Hossein Ensan was the winner of the ME, taking home $10M from a final table that featured no former bracelet winners. Ensan became the oldest ME winner since 1999, and had actually won a seniors’ event at EPT Barcelona back in 2014.
The final ME of the decade had attracted 8,569 runners: the second highest WSOP ME field ever, and just a few hundred short of the record-setting 8,773 who played the 2006 event. A new poker boom was gathering pace, and as the 2020s arrived we would see things we never expected to occur, including an online-only series and a Main Event field of over 10,000 players.
Onward and upward
If you’re wondering how things have developed since then, we invite you to turn your attention to our comprehensive coverage of this year’s WSOP, where we expect more records to fall.
As we wrap up this series of history lessons, it’s worth noting that while the home of the WSOP has moved around Las Vegas - from Binion’s to the Rio to the Horseshoe and Paris - the series has enjoyed other stops in other places around the world.
The WSOP Europe began in 2007, and since then events have taken place in Africa, Australia and most recently in the Bahamas, not to mention online. The WSOP Circuit has also continued to spread the brand far and wide, across the USA and internationally.
The history of the WSOP outside the poker rooms of Las Vegas is a whole other story which could fill an article of its own. But for now, let's enjoy another summer spectacle with the biggest live poker series in the world now in its 6th decade.
Long may it continue!
Additional images courtesy of Joe Giron/Alin Ivanov/Dutch Boyd/WPT/Lasvegasvegas.com
