The 2025 World Series Of Poker Arrives, Flush With Plotlines

Want to feel old? This ought to do the trick: There will be players competing in this summer’s World Series of Poker Main Event who hadn’t been born yet when Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP and launched what became known as the “poker boom.”

OK, to be fair, that was already the case last year, at the 2024 WSOP. Moneymaker claimed his bracelet in May 2003, so surely there were a few first-timers in last July’s Main Event who’d just turned 21 in the previous month or so.

But, it isn’t quite as compelling to note that there will be players competing in this year’s Main Event who hadn’t been born yet when Greg “Fossilman” Raymer won the tournament, right?

And the Moneymaker statement is still 100% true. So we’re sticking with it.

Anyway, the point is, time marches on, we’re all getting older, and the WSOP is well into its midlife crisis years, as this is the 56th annual series (if we count the first one, in 1970, when no tournaments were played but the world’s top players gathered for high-stakes cash games and voted on a winner).

The first tournament of the 2025 edition starts (or started, depending on when you read this) at noon Las Vegas time Tuesday, and there will be 99 more of them at two Strip venues — Horseshoe Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas — before the series wraps up on July 16.

Yes, there are a record 100 bracelet events this year in Vegas.

Here’s what’s new, what’s different, what questions are on people’s minds, and what numbers are worth noting over the next seven weeks.

GG, everybody

This is the first WSOP since NSUS Group Inc., the parent company of GGPoker, bought poker’s most iconic brand from Caesars.

How does that impact players? For the most part, it probably won’t, though there is one noteworthy sign of evolution: The WSOP+ app is being used at the Vegas series for the first time. It allows mobile registration for events so poker players can avoid waiting in physical lines, while also providing easy access to real-time updates on tournaments. Not sure how much time is remaining in the current level? Check the WSOP+ app.

Well, unless you’re at the final three tables of an event. There’s a new rule this year prohibiting smartphones at the table when a tournament nears its conclusion. That’s good for fair play and for preventing outside communication, even if it means those who get addicted to checking WSOP+ for updates will have to cope with some withdrawal symptoms.

Another Main Event record?

For 17 years, the 8,773-player field topped by Jamie Gold in 2006 stood as the largest ever to enter the $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em championship event.

Finally, that record fell — and fell forcefully — in 2023, when 10,043 players competed for the title.

And the very next summer, it fell again. Last year’s tournament attracted 10,112 entries.

Will the 2025 edition make it three years in a row establishing a new record?

Most insiders say no. Political and economic factors pose significant headwinds.

The stock market has bounced back from its April declines, but as Barron’s reported, on Q1 earnings calls, “more companies mentioned the word ‘recession’ on conference calls than any quarter since 2022.” So there is still some economic uncertainty.

Also, there are expectations of a “summer travel slump,” with the Trump administration’s immigration stance potentially scaring some people off and causing others to boycott travel to the U.S. In March, travel to Vegas was down 8% compared to March 2024.

Conventional wisdom suggests the number will be dinged just enough to make this the third-biggest Main Event ever, rather than the third-straight biggest Main Event ever.

There are other tournaments too, of course

A few fun facts about the 99 non-Main Event tourneys that make up the schedule:

• It starts (or started) with the $1,000 “Mystery Millions” event.
• The cheapest event on the schedule is $300 “Gladiators of Poker” tournament that begins June 25.
• The most expensive event is the $250,000 “Super High Roller” that starts June 15.
• Arguably the most prestigious event is the $50,000 “Poker Players Championship,” a mixed game that begins June 24.
• Arguably the most inventive event is the “Battle of the Ages,” featuring separate Day 1 flights on June 22 for entrants over and under 50.

The Hellmuth question

You have to hand it to Phil Hellmuth. He remains the master of making people in poker talk about him.

The all-time bracelet king with 17 to his name, Hellmuth, now 60, divided the poker world three months ago when he announced he wasn’t going to play the Main Event this year because the schedule is too grueling and tilts the field toward younger players.

Did he mean it, or was he just trying to use his name and his following as leverage to convince WSOP organizers to bake one more day off into the Main Event schedule?

It seemed like the latter when he hopped on social media on Memorial Day to backtrack and say he would let a “Twitter poll” decide whether he plays this year, while insisting his boycott will go into effect in 2026 if the WSOP doesn’t meet his demands for an extra day off.

If the poll was, “Do you want to hear Hellmuth improvise more The Clash parody songs?” it would be easy to predict the outcome.

Anyway, Hellmuth again has the poker world’s attention, and figures to be the dominant story (aside from the number of entries) as the four separate starting days of the tournament unfold.

Foxen hounds history

Every summer, the poker community roots for a woman to make the Main Event final table and potentially do for women’s interest in poker what Moneymaker did for amateur interest.

Last year, Kristen Foxen came damned close, finishing in 13th place and earning $600,000.

She will again be a focal point of coverage this year — but not just during the Main Event. Throughout the Series, she will be trying to become the first female player ever to win a bracelet in three consecutive years. Susie Isaacs won bracelets in ’96 and ’97, Nani Dollison did it in 2000 and 2001, and Foxen joined them — in a sense — with online bracelet wins in 2023 and ’24.

There would be an asterisk if she pulls it off, because not everyone regards online bracelet events the same as in-person wins. Still, three years in a row has never been done, and Foxen, clearly one of the top tournament players in the world, period, is a threat to become the first woman to manage that feat.

The Hall calls for someone

One subplot every year at the WSOP is the process of determining the next Poker Hall of Fame inductee.

Last year, Patrik Antonius gained induction. That left nine other strong candidates on the list of nominees, each with a chance again this year: Josh Arieh, Barny Boatman, “Miami” John Cernuto, Ted Forrest, Kathy Liebert, Mike Matusow, Matt Savage, Isai Scheinberg, and Bill Smith.

But they’ll have additional competition in the form of the newly eligible Scott Seiver (last year’s WSOP Player of the Year, now with seven bracelets to his name) and Nick Schulman (six-time bracelet winner and popular poker commentator). Both men just turned 40 and now qualify for consideration.

The poker world will watch closely to see who the 10 nominees are, scream about snubs, argue loudly about who deserves the votes, then scream about snubs again when the final results come in.