Kalshi Taking Bets on WSOP Main Event Attendance: Will it Reach 10,000 Entries in 2026?

Poker players who also trade predictions may be interested to note that Kalshi has a newly-listed market on whether the 2026 World Series of Poker main event will receive more than 10,000 entries.

Liquidity is very low, with only $1,113 in trading so far. Low liquidity and high volatility go hand-in-hand, and the line has swung wildly in early trading. Finding an edge will be hard until market makers step up, however, as the bid-ask spread is very wide. It will currently cost you 80 cents for a Yes share, while No is going for 50 cents. Neither of those will be attractive if you believe the actual chances are anywhere between 50% and 80%.

Those who’ve completed trades recently are putting it at close to a coin flip. Kalshi’s estimate, based on recent trades, suggest that the WSOP currently has only a 49% chance of seeing a five-figure main event field.

Recent Main Event History Suggests a Close

Ten thousand entries isn’t just a nice, round number. It’s also a highly appropriate place to set this line, in that the WSOP main event field has hovered right around that number since the pandemic.

In 2021, the WSOP was held at the Rio for the final time, and it took place in fall rather than summer. The first “normal” WSOP after the pandemic was in 2022.

In 2023, attendance leapt up past the 10,000 mark for the first time in event history. The jump from 8,663 to 10,043 reflected an increase just shy of 16%. The tournament inched even higher to an all-time record in 2024, but that proved the high-water mark for the moment, as 2025 saw a dip back below the 10,000 bar.

Effectively, the question is whether the slide in 2025 was an anomaly or whether it marked the beginning of a lasting downturn. Broadly speaking, the main event has grown over the years, but there have certainly been multi-year periods of contraction along the way.

Outside Factors Weigh Against High Turnout

WSOP main event attendance is sensitive to a variety of factors. These include the U.S. and world economies, U.S. foreign policy and ease of travel, cryptocurrency trading prices, and more.

Looking months into the future is never an exact science. But at the outset of 2026, most of these factors seem to weigh against a big turnout for the WSOP main event.

Tourism in Las Vegas has been declining. This is a well-documented issue that the city has attempted to combat with various policies. These include various promotions and even the resurrection of a Strip-only courtroom with the theoretical purpose of making the area safer for tourists. That trend failing to reverse itself before summer would be a negative indicator for the WSOP main.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has continued to turn off non-Americans, possibly costing the U.S. some European and Canadian travelers in particular. A recent CNBC article said U.S.-European relations are at the “lowest in NATO history.”

Bitcoin is down more than $30,000 from its price during last summer’s WSOP, though that’s obviously a factor subject to extreme volatility.

Perhaps the biggest bear indicator is the onerous and highly unpopular gambling tax change that passed last summer, which comes into play for 2026 income. It limits deductions to 90% of gambling income, effectively taxing gamblers on money they never made.

Poker players have heavily debated what impact, if any, the change will have on tournament participation. It’s too early to know the answer to that with any degree of certainty, but it can only hurt turnout.

Nevada politicians have led the charge trying to institute a repeal, but their efforts have failed thus far.

And yet, the series is under new ownership as of 2024, which could mean a change in strategy that would outweigh all those factors.

Wild Card: Will GGPoker Add Reentries?

The new owner, GGPoker, is famous for doing anything it can to boost tournament sizes. Depending on how willing it is to adjust the main event formula, it could rocket the WSOP main event to new heights. Any change to a tournament of the main event’s stature is bound to be controversial, yet it’s a possibility players have bandied about for years.

Even just adding starting flights could make a difference. Yet the big question hovering over the series is whether GGPoker will add re-entries. If that were to happen, registration numbers would soar to unprecedented levels, as pros would leap at the opportunity to fire multiple bullets. Even a single re-entry would boost the field size enough to make 10,000 a trivial target.

It’s not hard to see why people think this is a possibility, given GGPoker’s approach to other events, like the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event. That tournament managed to meet its lofty $60 million guarantee in December, despite having missed the year before, when the target was just $50 million. In part, the WSOP hit the number by allowing unlimited re-entries, and adjusting the structure in a way that encouraged multiple bullets.

The structure was unpopular with many players, some of whom voiced their dissent on social media. Even so, it achieved GGPoker’s goal.

In that sense, it’s worth noting that Kalshi’s terms don’t expressly reference re-entries one way or another. The exact phrasing is as follows:

If the number of people who enter the 2026 WSOP main event is above 10,000, then the market resolves to Yes.

WSOP’s official tally will be used to settle the market, however, and in the case of WSOP Paradise, only the total number of entries was disclosed, not the number of unique entries.

Image credit: Jean-Christophe Benoist/Wikimedia Commons (license)