Many of this year's preliminary events --especially NLHE tournaments-- saw huge fields, including several tournaments selling out. These strong turnouts had WSOP officials excited about the possibility of topping 7,000 players for the Main Event.

With three days in the book, the 2009 WSOP is off last year's pace by almost 700 entrants. Tournament officials were hopeful that the low turnouts from Day 1a and Day 1b were due to the holiday weekend, and were optimistic about the possibility of a big turnout today. Unfortunately, today's turnout was off last years pace by over 230 entrants.

2008: Day 1a - 1,297 Day 1b - 1,158 Day 1c - 1,928 Day 1d - 2,461
2009: Day 1a - 1,116 Day 1b - 873 Day 1c - 1,697 Day 1d - ?????

With one more day to go it's unlikely that this years WSOP will eclipse last year's total of 6,844: Day 1d's turnout would have to be over 3,100 entrants to approach last year's Main Event numbers, which is highly unlikely.

In fact, if Day 1d's numbers match last year's the Main Event will draw less than 6,000 entrants for the first time since 2005; even more chilling would be if the current trend continues the 2009 WSOP could draw less than the 5,619 entrants the 2005 WSOP had.