Rio’s Top 20 Least Attended WSOP Events Are Primarily 2-7 Draw Lowball

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Jun 10, 2018 3 min read Last updated Jun 12, 2018

On Sunday, the 2018 World Series of Poker Event #23: $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Championship got underway with just a dozen players. Of course, that number climbed as players late registered and exercised their single re-entry option. Toward the end of Day 1, the field stood at just 70 entries, though registration remains open until the start of Day 2.

Traditionally, 2-7 lowball events have been among the least attended tournaments of the summer, which isn’t much of a surprise considering it’s a specialty of sorts. Still, what’s to account for the stagnation?

If there’s an expert on 2-7 lowball it’s seven-time bracelet winner and 2006 Poker Hall of Fame inductee Billy Baxter. Five of his bracelets have come in the variant spanning from 1975-1993.

“I’ll tell you why it’s such a small turnout. First off, the people who play this game like to gamble, and for all the big players, this was the game of choice many years ago,” he said. “When we were playing a $5,000 buy-in, David Gray won it for $365K. Now they’ve got a $10,000 buy-in and you might be lucky to get out the door with $100K+. That tells you they’ve messed the tournament up really bad.”

Baxter: "We need to talk to them about getting it back to the way it was."

He continued: “Having said that, now that they’re letting people re-enter once, I think we need to talk to them about getting it back to the way it was and it might be a $1 million prize with a $5,000 entry. Back then it was $5,000 for four hours, you could rebuy anytime you had less than the starting stack, and a double add-on at the end. It was the greatest tournament in the world.”

Baxter also believes the price point plays a big role in the low turnout.

“All the good players don’t even come over and play no more because they can’t win enough,” he explained. “The cash games are better, so if they could come play for $1 million they’d be over here instead. They love it, it’s their favorite game. That’s the reason no one is here, it’s too cheap.”

According to Paul Volpe, who topped a field of 87 runners to win the 2014 WSOP Event #13: $10,000 NL 2-7 Draw Lowball for $242,662, another reason is lack of learning opportunities.

“A big part of it is that there is nowhere for the younger generation to practice,” he said. “When I was coming up I loved the FTOPS and I’d see a new game. I wanted to get up on the leaderboard so I’d go learn the game playing cash. That’s how I learned. Now there are a lot of young American guys who would love to play mix but there’s just nowhere to play. There’s essentially nowhere to get new people. Who knows if in 10 years this event will still be here.”

Below is a look at the top 20 lowest attended events – minus the $1,000,000 Big One for One Drops – since the WSOP relocated to the Rio in 2005.

*Note that while 2005’s Event #39: $5,000 NL 2-7 Draw Lowball technically drew 65 runners, at the time it offered untallied rebuys and a double add-on, which juiced the prize pool to $986,860.

Top 20 Lowest Attended WSOP Events Since 2005

PR & Media Manager for PokerNews, Podcast host & 2013 WSOP Bracelet Winner.

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