WSOP Main Event To Award $10 Million To First Place, $1 Million To Ninth

The World Series of Poker Main Event’s entry period ended Monday afternoon — a few hours into Day 2d, the last session before the entire surviving field consolidates Tuesday — and the numbers fell right in line with most industry predictions.

A total of 9,735 players entered, making this the third-largest Main Event field ever, behind last year’s record 10,112 and the previous year’s then-record 10,043.

If not for those two massive fields the prior two summers, 9,735 would have been strong enough to shatter the record that stood for 17 years. The 2006 total of 8,773 players in the final Main Event was prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which punctured the balloon that was online poker’s exponential growth.

With the 2025 field size finalized and the prize pool locked in at $90,535,500, the WSOP was able to calculate and reveal payout information Monday evening.

First place will receive an even $10 million, and everyone who makes the final TV table of nine players will earn at least $1 million. Full final table payouts:

Other numbers to know

The money bubble will burst when there are 1,461 players remaining (15% of the field), most likely either late in the day Tuesday or early Wednesday. The lowest prize tier is set at $15,000 — good for a $5k profit over the $10,000 entry into the no-limit hold’em tournament.

Entering Tuesday’s Day 3 play, the field stood at 3,453 remaining competitors, with more than 6,000 hopefuls already having been separated from their chips.

The chip leader after Monday was San Kim, with 799,000 in chips. The average stack size was a little over 169,000.

The entry numbers dipped 3.7% from the record-setting 2024 field, but that was right in line with most expectations before this year’s World Series began. Industry insiders cited economic uncertainty and concerns from international travelers over the U.S. government’s aggressive immigration stance as potential factors standing in the way of another field over 10,000.

Many earlier WSOP events enjoyed larger fields than comparable tournaments in past years, but they were buoyed by rebuy and re-entry options. The Main Event, on the other hand, is a true freeze-out event, meaning once eliminated, a player cannot buy in again. And in such a tournament, a few hundred potential players disinclined to venture onto U.S. soil are enough to prevent a record from being established.