The World Series Main Event is underway and the field is smaller again for the third year in a row. This year, there are 1,116 entrants for day 1a. Last year, 1,297 players entered the Main Event on Day 1a. 1,287 played Day 1a two years ago and 2,138 played Day 1a in 2006.

 This steady decline can be attributed to a slow in the poker boom that occurred after Moneymaker took down the bracelet. Its also safe to say that this years registration took a hit because of the economic downswing, but it's still a massive field to navigate.

We did some math to predict this years prize pool and the amount that first place will take down along with the bracelet. We used numbers from past years to determine total entrants and came up with 5,780. We then multiplied this by the entrance fee of $10,000 to come up with a pre-rake prize pool of $57,800,000. Then took out the rake of around 6% to come up with a post-rake pool of around $54,332,000. Finally we multiplied that number by the percentage the past winners have won and got a first place prize of $7,769,476.

 This is just a rough math estimate, but it gives you a good idea of what the prize for first place could be.

 Good luck to all of the entrants!