Friday, 29th March 2024 10:56
Home / Uncategorized / WSOP 2017: “I bet you I can guess how many physical chips are in play…”

Is poker all about the money? Of course not. But we all like winning money when we can, so we’re taking a moment with this post to provide those of you not playing in today’s tournament a way to earn some cash from it, anyway.

You’ve heard the news about this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event field and how the 7,221 players who turned out for the $10,000 championship of poker represents the biggest field since 2010, and the third-largest Main Event field in the WSOP’s history.

You’ve also heard about the $67,877,400 prize pool, about how each of the nine players making the final table will win a minimum of $1 million, and about the whopping $8.15 million first-place prize.

The WSOP has provided some more Main Event numbers to go along with those. Even though we’re primarily fans of the stories and characters poker produces here at PokerStars Blog, we can get as geeky as anybody over numbers, too, and so we can’t resist sharing.

Those 7,221 players came to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas from 83 countries, with their average age 40.59 years.

Players pack the Amazon Room Day 1B Main Event_2017 WSOP_EV73_Day 1B_Furman_8FU4473.jpg

Let’s talk demographics

For the fifth straight year William Wachter is the oldest player participating — he’s 96 years old (and one year behind Jack Ury’s record of 97), while Alex Conklin played Day 1B on his 21st birthday, making him the youngest.

The field is comprised of 6,949 men and 272 women, meaning the women make up right about 3.77 percent of the field.

The United States sent 5,218 players, making it the most represented country by far (as usual). Players came from all 50 states, with the most coming from California (922) and the least from Wyoming (just two).

Meanwhile Canada (380), the United Kingdom (324), France (107), and Germany (93) are next on the countries list.

The winner will have to accumulate all 361,050,000 chips in play, something that will happen sometime during the evening of Saturday, July 22.

wsop-chips.jpg

Nice stack, but barely a start

There are 245,514 actual physical chips being used, but you can be sure they’ll be running off all the smaller denomination ones well before that moment comes. After all, a pile of nearly a quarter million chips would take up the entire winner’s photo and then some.

Finally, 1,626 decks of cards are in use with 920 dealers pitching the pasteboards.

Interesting, huh? Oh, right… we were trying to make some money. Here’s what you do…

Bookmark this page right now, and work on committing these numbers to memory. Then at your next social gathering casually bring up WSOP Main Event trivia. You know what to do from there…

1. Make a cleverly contrived bet with someone.
2. ???
3. Profit.

You’re welcome.


WSOP photos by PokerPhotoArchive.com.

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