Seated at the $2,500 pot-limit hold’em/Omaha final table was an alarming line-up of pros, which included Rob Hollink, Craig Gray, Kevin MacPhee, David Chiu, Gavin Cochrane, Victor Ramdin, James Mitchell, and Matt Sterling.

First one to bust out in 9th was Matt Sterling ($20,698), whose Ah-Kh push fell to chip leader Kevin MacPhee’s pocket 10’s. Velador then busted out Gavin Cochrane holding As-Jh, out in 8th ($26,906) with his pocket 8’s. Next, James Mitchell was removed in 7th ($35,331) and Victor Ramdin in 6th ($46,861) through Omaha rounds. Kevin MacPhee then took $62,791 in 5th spot, with Velador the beneficiary of his chips, who was now sitting on a 1.5 million chip stack. After Craig Gray was removed in 4th ($85,030), the three enduring finalists had a total of six career WSOP bracelets between them and after Jose-Luis Velador took Rob Hollink out in 3rd ($116,359), he then faced 4 times WSOP winner David Chiu in a heads-up battle for crucial poker glory.

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Look at how the competitors in the WSOP Main Event unfolds: 2003 started out with only 830 entries, this is also the time that Moneymaker made run to the finals and won. In 2004, the number of entries had gone on the roof with more than 3 times than the previous year with 2,576 entrants. In 2005, players that enter in the event was 5,619. And the highest would be in 2006 with 8,773 entries. While in 2007 and 2008 have gone low with 6, 358 and 6, 844 entrants.

The sudden decrease in number from 2006 can be simply blamed into the passage of the UIGEA which eventually earmark the withdrawal of vital poker sites from the US market. And this event causes the decrease of people who are enthusiastically playing online and also a decrease in satellite chances in order to get an opportunity to play in major competitions.

Though the government had made issues concerning online gambling and doubled their efforts in order to smashed this recreation, the numbers of entries following the UIGEA passage can’t lie. It means that a lot of people are really drawn to poker online that they can’t be stopped.

One testament would be the huge success of the $1,000 NLHE tournament, also called the “Stimulus Special” by the WSOP brass. This poker comp holds the largest stat in a non-Main Event history of WSOP with more than 6,000 entrants. But the large number of players did not stop poker pro Steve sung to bag the title and win his first ever WSOP bracelet.

It will be hard to say if the players this year can reach 6,000 because of all the hinders such as the recession, swine flu and more UIGEA forces. But as the number in the preliminaries are big, maybe the Main event this present year will turnout to be one of the largest so far.

Since there is a surge of population despite the UIGEA maybe it will be time for the government to legalize and legislate poker in the internet. Poker is a fun and entertaining game and I’m certain that there would be more happy faces when the UIGEA will be repelled.