The World Series has once again proven that poker is more alive than ever: there are more tournaments, and prize money records are being broken. This summer, the series crossed the $500 million threshold for the first time in total prize money. Prize money in the entire history of the WSOP has exceeded $5.2 billion, and the total number of registrations has exceeded 2.5 million. And a few more numbers: 159,315 people have played in the main tournaments alone over 56 years.
The WSOP's statistics for 2025 are also impressive:
Offline | Online | |
---|---|---|
Bracelets Awarded | 100 | 30 |
Total Prize Pool | $481.7 million | $29.8 million |
Number of Entries | 246,960 | 50,461 |
Commission Collected | $47 million | $3 million |
Paid to Staff | $14 million | no data |
The record attendance was ensured not only by the increase in the number of tournaments, but also by additional starting days, new tournaments with reentries instead of freezeouts and the WSOP+ app, which was noted by almost every regular. The ability to register for a tournament before arriving at the casino and not stand in endless lines was very useful.
More than 1,700 dealers worked on the series, servicing 750+ gaming tables daily. On average, the 7-week work marathon allowed them to earn $8,000. However, quantity does not always mean quality, and there were plenty of complaints about errors: dealers mixed up the trading streets, took cards from players ahead of time, and laid out extra cards.
The 2025 Main Event's Successes and Failures
The Main Event failed to break the 10,000-entry threshold, but still became the third-largest in history in terms of size (9,735) and prize money ($90,535,500). Its smaller version, the Mini Main Event, attracted 1,000 more registrations.
The most popular tournaments:
- $300 Gladiators of Poker – 24,629
- $1,000 Mystery Millions – 19,654
- $500 Colossus – 16,301
- $1,500 Millionaire Maker – 11,996
- $1,000 Mini Main Event – 10,794
More than half of the Main's participants were Americans. In second place were their closest neighbors, the Canadians (421), followed by citizens of the UK (388), France (292), Japan (217) and Brazil (189). The oldest player was 95 years old.
Michael Mizrachi earned $10,000,000 for his victory. The same amount was paid to Martin Jacobson (2014), Hossein Ensan (2019), Espen Jorstad (2022) and Jonathan Tamayo (2024) for a similar achievement. Only Jamie Gold (2008) and Daniel Weinman (2023) have earned more in the Main Event.
The Most Bracelets (Phil Hellmuth is Still Safe)
The series saw minimal changes to the all-time bracelet tally. Four of the top five players — Hellmuth, Ivey, Seidel and Chen — were unable to add to their bracelet stashes. They were left with 17, 11, 10 and 10 bracelets, respectively.

In the catch-up group, the most serious breakthrough was made by Benny Glaser, who won 3 times. Seventh place is shared with him by another WSOP 2025 winner, Michael Mizrachi. Both have 8 bracelets.
Bryan Rast, Nick Shulman and Shaun Deeb each won their seventh career bracelet. Mike Gorodinsky won his fifth bracelet. There were no other changes in the top 50.
Some additional statistics:
- For 53 of the 100 champions, the WSOP bracelets they won was their first in their career.
- Only four players have managed to win more than one tournament: Joshua Remitio (2), Blaz Zerjav (2), Michael Mizrachi (2) and Benny Glaser (3).
- Benny Glaser became the seventh player in history to win three bracelets in one series, joining Puggy Person (1973), Ted Forrest (1993), Phil Hellmuth (1993), Phil Ivey (2002), Jeff Lisandro (2009) and Scott Seiver (2024).
- Michael Mizrachi has won the $50K Player Championship for the fourth time in his career. He previously won in 2010, 2012, and 2018. The new world champion has surpassed Bryan Rast in the number of victories in this tournament (he won in 2011, 2016, and 2023).
Jesse Yaginuma, the subject of the year's biggest scandal, can boast of a unique achievement – he's the only winner of a World Series tournament who left without a bracelet!
The only female champion of 2025, Shiina Okamoto, continued her unique streak of performances in the Ladies Event (runner-up in 2023 + victory in 2024). Even the official WSOP website does not believe that this is possible and divides the Japanese woman's results into two profiles. Together, they already have more than half a million in prize money and 28th place in the All Time Money List among women.

Who Won the Most at the 2025 WSOP?
The biggest prizes at the WSOP, as usual, go to either high rollers or main event finalists. The latter took four places in the top payouts in 2025.

Thomas Bolvin and Alex Foxen are the most prominent players on the list. Thomas cashed three times, never made it to heads-up, but still managed to cash enough to reach seventh place. That was enough to overtake Hallaert in the Belgian players rankings.

Foxen finished second in the $250,000 Super High Roller, where Thomas Bolvin was eliminated third, and also reached the final tables of the $10,000 (7/874) and $100,000 (6/121) Omaha events.

Seth Davis won that Super High Roller. The $4,752,551 first place prize was his biggest yet, although compared to his career total of $44,639,494, it doesn't seem like much.
Top 10 largest cashes in the 2025 WSOP:
- Michael Mizrachi – $10,000,000 (Main Event).
- Seth Davis – $4,752,552 ($250K SHR).
- Alex Foxen – $3,060,314 ($250K SHR).
- Shaun Deeb – $2,957,229 ($100K PLO HR).
- Hoi Le Nguyen – $2,686,913 ($50K HR).
- Joao Vieira – $2,649,158 ($100K HR).
- Dennis Weiss – $2,292,155 ($25K HR).
- Dylan Linde – $2,146,414 ($25 HR).
- Thomas Bolvin – $2,057,430 ($250K SHR).
- Jason Koon – $1,968,927 ($50K HR).
Mizrachi is by far the luckiest on this list, too: he was able to win 1,000 buy-ins, getting going in the late stages of the Main Event from a couple of blinds. Surprisingly, he's not even in the top three re-ups:
- Ian Peltz wins $420,680 in #67 $300 Gladiators of Poker – 1,402 buy-in.
- Courtney Williams won $542,540 in #19 $500 No-Limit Hold'em Colossus – 1085 buy-ins, and it's his first ITM at the WSOP!
- Nelson Marie Sanchez won $777,777 in #90 $777 Lucky 7's – 1,001 buy-in.
- Michael Wilklow wins $1,000,000 in #1 $1,000 Mystery Millions – 1,000 buy-ins.
A masterclass in ITM hitting was shown by Scott Bohlman and Shaun Deeb with insane 28 and 24 cashes!

It's no surprise that both men made it into the top 5 of the Player of the Year rankings. But Sean pulled away thanks to his excellent results in high-stakes Omaha. In #36 $10,000 PLO8, he took third place, and in #79 $100,000 High-Roller PLO, he won.

The series attracted 295 players who managed to cash at least 10 times, including the phenomenal Roland Israelashvili, who had made it into the ITM in World Series tournaments 514 times before his first victory.
Among the women, Leo Margetts, who reached the final table of the Main Event, had the best result in terms of prize money. Her $1,500,000 for seventh place made her the second-highest-paid WSOP player among women ($2,580,033). Only Liv Boeree has more than her with $3,240,624.
It Wasn't Just Americans Winning at the WSOP
In 35 of the 100 tournaments, non-USA players won. Players from Great Britain (6 bracelets) and the Czech Republic (3) were particularly successful. But if there was a "national hero" award, it would go to Blaž Žerjav. His two victories were the first for Slovenia.
Foreigners like smaller field sizes and more expensive tournaments: they conquered tournaments with an average field of 1,743 participants and an average buy-in of $9,310. For comparison, there were 2,412 entries per tournament on average. The expectation of visiting professionals was directly proportional to the number of pocket cards: almost half of the bracelets were won in non-Hold'em tournaments.
Prize winners from each country:
- USA – Michael Mizrachi – $11,372,233
- Belgium – Thomas Bovin – $3,431,455
- Portugal – Joao Vieira – $3,251,583
- Vietnam – Hoi Le Nguyen – $2,710,885
- Germany – Dennis Weiss – $2,412,502
- Serbia – Luka Bozovic – $2,403,018
- Czech Republic – Martin Kabrhel – $2,152,236
- Andorra – Alexander Reard – $1,959,224
- South Korea – Chang Lee – $1,949,044
- Slovenia – Blaz Zherjav – $1,942,328
So, Live Poker Isn't Dead?
The 2025 World Series of Poker saw 99 bracelets awarded in live tournaments, just like last year, compared to a hundred tournaments, thanks to the aforementioned Millionaire Maker collusion. There were significantly more entries over the year, 246,960 versus 228,413. Other key metrics also grew by about 9%. For comparison, 2024 saw +6% in registrations and +4% in prize pools compared to 2023.
2006 | 2011 | 2019 | 2024 | 2025 | Growth 2024-2025 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bracelets Awarded | 45 | 59 | 90 | 99 | 100 | +1 |
Prize Pool | $156 million | $192 million | $293 million | $437.28 million | $481.7 million | +9.8% |
Number of Entries | 45,000+ | 75,672 | 187,290 | 228,413 | 246,960 | +12% |
Commission Collected | — | — | — | $41.92 million | $47 million | +8.25% |
Payments to Staff | — | — | — | $12.64 million | $14 million | +9.29% |
Main Event Participants | 8,773 | 6,865 | 8,569 | 10,112 | 9,735 | -3.7% |
Results – not including online tournaments
Other records also speak to the growing popularity of the World Series:
- 37,311 unique payees.
- 43 times players received prize money of more than $1,000,000 per tournament.
- #53 Millionaire Maker sets new record for most entries (11,996) for a $1,500 buy-in tournament.
- The #89 Mid-Stakes Championship set a new record for the most entries (3,797) for a $3,000 tournament.
- #86 Mystery Bounty PLO became the largest (5,284) Omaha tournament in poker history.
- The prize pool exceeded $2,000,000 in 57 tournaments.
- In 9 tournaments the prize pool exceeded $10,000,000.