Upon compiling the total buy-in and prize money figures for 2005, it's easily apparent that last year was a banner year for tournament poker. Record attendance at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) accounted for the major boost in prize money distributed, but millions more were given out over the course of the year's tournament poker events.
While the WSOP accounted for over $100 million given out in prize money, more than half of which was won in the 5,600+ player Main Event, over $67 million more was won throughout the year at World Poker Tour (WPT) events. The real beneficiaries of tournament poker's success, however, are the individual winners, as a whopping 63 players won over half a million dollars through tournament play, 34 of whom joined the ranks of the year's millionaires club.
WSOP champ Joe Hachem sat atop the tournament money-winners leaderboard for 2005, raking in an additional $114,022 on top of his record $7.5 million World Series Main Event win. While Hachem, Steve Dannenmann, and John "Tex" Barch essentially owe their million-dollar 2005 successes to top finishes in the WSOP Main Event, other top money winners, such as Phil Ivey, Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, and Michael Gracz nursed their stacks to wins and cashes in multiple tournaments, finishing third, sixth, and seventh on the money list, respectively.
But to have such amazing paydays costs some serious dough, too. The buy-ins for one player to compete in all events at the WSOP totaled an astounding $116,000. And if a player were to enter each and every WPT and WSOP circuit tournament in addition to the tens of events at the six-week-long World Series, they would have to fork over $355,550. Needless to say, there were tens of thousands of people who didn't fare as well in poker tournaments last year supplying the millions won by the 2005 money leaders.
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