Will the WSOP Main Event get 10,000+ runners
Following the news that Kalshi has opened up a market on the Main Event, Barry Carter suggests we will see a second decline in a row.
This week, Kalshi opened up a market on whether the 2026 Main Event will get over 10,000 entries, which seemed a tad optimistic for my liking.
The market currently puts the odds at 52% at the time of writing, suggesting we could be looking at an improvement on last year.
In 2025, the Main Event attracted 9,735 runners. That made it the third-largest WSOP Main Event in poker history, the largest was in 2024 when it drew 10,112 runners, and the 2nd largest was the year before when it boasted 10,043 players.
Sadly, I don't think that is what we will see, but I will be happy to be proven wrong.
The Trump tax
The main reason for this is the infamous Trump gambling tax, which came into effect this year. The tax puts a 90% cap on gambling loss deductions, making poker unviable for some.
The Main Event is a different beast for many, and a lot of poker players in the US have pledged to only play this event in 2026 as a result of the new law. So there could be a "fire sale" mentality where poker players come in droves for their only big event of the year.
However, I think it would take a removal of the cap, which certainly could happen before the summer, to give the Main Event a chance. Things like this cap put off the Weekend Warrior types who want to avoid the complexity of this new bill.
Not a great time to visit the States
Last year, I predicted that the Main Event would see a decrease in numbers, and I was right. My main reasoning was that America did not seem very welcoming to foreigners in the wake of Trump's tariffs.
This year, I think the same thing. Right now, the rest of the world is seeing a version of America which is being very hostile towards immigrants and its own citizens, plus Trump is still talking about tariffs.
I think we are slowly getting to the stage where many poker players don't see the WSOP as mandatory to attend anymore, and as long as America seems unwelcoming to outsiders, I can't see the Main Event topping 10,000 runners again.
