Tag: attendance

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2022 WSOP Main Event Falls Just Short of Record-Breaking Attendance

2022 WSOP Main Event Falls Just Short of Record-Breaking Attendance
2022 wsop main event

Many projected a record-breaking year for the 2022 World Series of Poker Main Event, some even anticipating 10,000 or more players. But when registration officially closed around 4 p.m. on Friday, the 2006 record of 8,773 entries still stood.

With 8,663 entrants, this year’s world championship event is officially the second largest in the tournament’s 53-year history, slightly higher than the 8,569 of 2019. The winner on July 17 will take home $10 million, with second place receiving $6 million.

Gold Holds onto Record

Jamie Gold
Jamie Gold

Jamie Gold, who didn’t compete in the 2022 Main Event, can still stake his claim to having won the largest Main Event of all-time. In 2006, during the height of the poker boom, he defeated a massive field en route to a $12 million payday, also the largest cash in any WSOP event not named the $1 million Big One for One Drop.

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but Gold was rooting for the record to not only be broken, but to be “smashed.” And he thought it should have been years ago.

“I’ve been looking forward to seeing a larger field in the main event since I was lucky enough to play in my first that happened to have the largest field,” Gold told PokerNews. “If not for a ridiculous law that in effect shut down US online poker in 2007, I believe there would be 25,000 entrants or more by now, then hopefully without having to add the Day 2 buy in option.”

“The amount of players sponsored and winning satellites combined with the expansion of at least 38 states playing in mutual pools would have been wonderful to see. I believe the game and community I care about deeply is still growing and will continue to expand as states legalize and the next generation of players discover new ways of playing and more variants. Either way, that number will be surpassed next year finally and I look forward to getting back to playing again. Was very sad to miss it this year.”

Prior to the start of the World Series of Poker, the PokerNews crew made some predictions on Main Event attendance, all of which weren’t too far off base, except for Matthew Pitt, who projected an underwhelming 7,294 entries. Five out of 10 of us predicted a record-breaking Main Event.

Top 10 Largest WSOP Main Events in History

Year Entrants Winner
2006 8,773 Jamie Gold
2022 8,663 ?
2019 8,569 Hossein Ensan
2018 7,874 John Cynn
2010 7,319 Jonathan Duhamel
2011 6,865 Pius Heinz
2008 6,844 Peter Eastgate
2016 6,737 Qui Nguyen
2014 6,683 Martin Jacobson

Long Lines Frustrate Players

Registration remained open until the start of Level 8 on Day 2d, two 120-minute levels into the session. Hundreds of players late registered before play began on Friday but were stuck in a huge line that wrapped around the Bally’s ballroom, some even had to wait up to two hours just to get into a game.

PokerNews was approached by multiple frustrated players in line who were angry with the wait times. But there simply weren’t seats available until players busted, according to a floor manager we spoke with.

Each player started with 60,000 chips regardless of when they first took a seat. At the start of Day 2, the blinds were at 400-800, meaning the first players in line would begin with a healthy stack of 75 big blinds. Those who were last to enter the tournament started with 50 big blinds.

Follow the 2022 WSOP Main Event on PokerNews

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Joly calls Canadian official’s attendance at Russian Embassy event ‘unacceptable’ | CBC News

Joly calls Canadian official's attendance at Russian Embassy event 'unacceptable' | CBC News

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says it was unacceptable for a Canadian official to have attended a reception hosted by the Russian Embassy and promised that no similar incidents would occur again.

The statement follows reporting by the Globe and Mail that Yasemin Heinbecker, the deputy chief of protocol at the Global Affairs department, attended a Russia Day celebration at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa Friday night. The holiday commemorates Russia’s constitutional reform at the end of the Soviet era.

Heinbecker’s attendance comes as Canada and its allies have pushed back against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation.”

“This is unacceptable. No Canadian representative should have attended the event hosted at the Russian Embassy [and] no Canadian representative will attend this kind of event again,” Joly wrote in a tweet Sunday night.

She reiterated that Canada continues to support Ukraine.

WATCH | ‘No Canadian representative will attend this kind of event again,’ Joly says:

Unacceptable’ that Canadian official attended Russian Embassy event: Joly

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said it was unacceptable for a Canadian official to have attended a reception hosted by the Russian Embassy, and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

A Global Affairs Canada spokesperson said the decision to send a protocol officer to the reception was made by the department. 

“No Canadian representative should have attended the event hosted at the Russian Embassy and no Canadian representative will attend this kind of event in the future,” said the GAC statement.

“Russian officials will not be invited to Canada Day events hosted by the department.”

Diplomats from other countries attended

Russian Ambassador to Canada Oleg Stepanov said he appreciated Heinbecker coming to the event.

“We believe diplomacy is an all-weather instrument and diplomatic protocol is an important part of upkeeping the bilateral communications. Diplomacy is about dialogue,” he said in a statement. 

“We don’t look at Canada through the adversarial optic and are ready to patiently wait when [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau’s cabinet or the next government come to understand that it’s in Canadian national interest to pursue good-neighbourly relations with Russia.”

The embassy said Joly was also invited to the reception and said diplomats from other countries attended.

Since the assault in Ukraine began in February, the Canadian government has imposed sanctions on individuals with ties to Russia and sent military supplies, including ammunition, to aid Ukrainian troops.

Last week, the RCMP disclosed that assets and transactions worth more than $400 million Cdn have been sanctioned as a result of Moscow’s war on Ukraine. 

Conservative interim leader Candice Bergen said the Liberal government should do more to isolate Vladimir Putin’s regime, including expelling Russian diplomats.

“Instead of endorsing the lavish, Kremlin-backed celebration at the Russian embassy, the Liberal government should be working with countries like Egypt, Pakistan and those in Africa to prevent Putin’s illegal war from causing a global food crisis which will hurt developing countries the most,” she said in a statement.

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Attendance plummets at LA covid vaccination events

Attendance plummets at LA covid vaccination events

Nurse Angel Ho-king sways her head to the sound of salsa music as she waits for people willing to roll up their sleeves to get a shot. Ho-king is part of a four-person crew staffing a covid-19 vaccine table at a health fair in Rampart Village, a predominantly immigrant neighborhood about 10 minutes from Dodger Stadium.

In three hours on a recent Saturday, Ho-king and Brenda Rodriguez, a medical assistant, vaccinated 16 people — far fewer than they had anticipated. Nearly everyone who showed up at the fair, organized by Saban Community Clinic, was an adult seeking a booster shot or a young child getting a first dose (children ages 5 to 11 became eligible for a vaccine late last year).

As covid infections have declined so too has interest in covid vaccines — even though the shots are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death from the virus.

In California’s most-populous county, where more than 1.7 million people have not received even one dose, vaccination events have turned desolate. About 46,000 county residents got their first dose in March, a 79% decline from January, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Those who remain unvaccinated are harder to convince, telling health care workers and vaccination coordinators that they don’t feel a sense of urgency.

According to a January survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, about 1 in 10 California adults said they definitely won’t get vaccinated, which has remained consistent since January 2021, and 86% of unvaccinated adults said the omicron variant wasn’t enough to persuade them. Employers and businesses are dropping or rolling back vaccination mandates. And although proof of vaccination once offered perks like allowing people to go maskless indoors, face coverings are generally no longer required in California.

At a recent vaccination drive coordinated by an immigrant advocacy group in Palmdale, near Lancaster in northern LA County, only two people showed up over four hours, both for second doses. As of April 1, 25% of Palmdale residents ages 5 and up were unvaccinated, compared with 17% of county residents, according to county data.

Jorge Perez, Salva Organization‘s vaccine coordinator, spent a week promoting the event with his team, going door to door, visiting local businesses, and publicizing it on social media. At previous vaccine drives, “we got 42 people, then 20, then four,” said a disappointed Perez. “Now two.”

Perez reduced the number of staffers at vaccination events from five to two in February as the numbers started to dwindle.

Much work remains to be done to combat vaccine misinformation, especially given the spread of BA.2, an omicron subvariant that is highly transmissible, said Dr. Richard Seidman, chief medical officer for L.A. Care, a public Medicaid insurance plan that serves county residents. The number of covid cases and hospitalizations had been declining since February, but the county is again seeing a bump in cases, according to data released this week.

People have various reasons for remaining unvaccinated, Seidman said. “For some, it’s distrust of the government or health care providers in general,” he said. “Some are more cautious and want to take a wait-and-see approach. Others simply don’t believe the science.”

A study published April 11 by JAMA Internal Medicine shows just how entrenched views are. Many people who refused to get vaccinated early on said they were waiting for the shots to get full approval from the FDA. But when the agency’s first full approval of a covid vaccine came in August 2021, the study concluded, it did little to change people’s minds and “had little immediate impact on vaccination intentions.”

In California, unvaccinated people were nearly 14 times as likely to die from covid as people who had been fully vaccinated and received a booster dose, according to state data from March 7-13.

Perez said people getting their first shots now are doing so mainly because they feel obligated — to meet a work requirement, for example, or enter places such as restaurants, bars, and gyms that require proof of vaccination.

That was the case for Modesto Araizas, one of the two people who showed up at the Palmdale vaccine event. Despite contracting covid twice, missing work, and having a hard time breathing, he didn’t get vaccinated until he needed proof of vaccination to eat at his favorite seafood restaurant.

“I haven’t been scared,” said Araizas, 46. “I take vitamins, eat healthy food, and I work out.”

Until recently, the federal government reimbursed doctors, hospitals, and other providers for tests, treatments, and vaccines for uninsured people. But the Health Resources and Services Administration stopped accepting reimbursement claims for tests and treatments March 22, and for vaccinations April 5.

Many uninsured people now will likely need to pay out-of-pocket for tests and other services.

Perez is hoping people might become more open to vaccines if covid tests become too expensive for them. No one will want to keep paying for tests when they can just get a shot, he reasoned.

Nurse Roxanna Segovia works at a pop-up vaccine and testing clinic in front of South LA Cafe in South Central LA. She recently spent 45 minutes trying to persuade a man who had visited the clinic regularly for free tests to get vaccinated.

“He gave me all the reasons he has not been vaccinated, like his civil rights were being violated and Bible verses,” Segovia said. “His job requires it now, and he said he was losing money by missing work waiting for test results. If he continued this way, he wouldn’t be able to feed his family, but even so, he still wasn’t sure if he was making the right choice.”

At the end of their conversation, he got the shot.

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.




Kaiser Health NewsThis article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Olympics Live: Organizers say medal event attendance 97,000

Olympics Live: Organizers say medal event attendance 97,000

BEIJING (AP) — The Latest on the Beijing Winter Olympics:

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Chinese organizers say a total of 97,000 spectators have attended medal events at the Beijing Olympics.

That’s less than two-thirds of the 150,000 predicted on the eve of the Olympics more than two weeks ago. The games close Sunday.

The number was revealed at a meeting of IOC members by the executive vice president of the local organizing committee, Zhang Jiandong.

Venues in Beijing and Zhangjiakou could have invited spectators attend but fans were not allowed at Alpine skiing and sliding sports in Yanqing.

Plans to sell tickets to international visitors were scrapped last year because of the coronavirus pandemic and the block was extended to residents of China in January.

Spectators were to be invited from international communities living in mainland China, members of diplomatic missions and marketing partners.

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The men’s 50-kilometer cross-country ski race at the Olympics has been delayed and the length reduced to 30 kilometers because of the weather.

The International Ski Federation said the decision was made “in regards to the athletes safety to reduce the time of exposure of athletes in extreme conditions.”

The wind has blasted the Zhangjiakou National Cross Country Center all morning, sending plumes of snow into the air.

The temperature is hovering around minus 18 degrees C (0 degrees F).

The 50-kilometer race can take up to two hours to complete, leaving athletes exposed and susceptible to frostbite. The racers will ski a 7.1-kilometer course four times, instead of the originally planned six laps on an 8.3-kilometer course.

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The last Alpine skiing race of the Beijing Olympics has been pushed back a day because of strong winds.

The mixed team parallel event was rescheduled from Saturday to Sunday, the last day of the Winter Games. It will start at 9 a.m. Beijing time.

It was supposed to start Saturday morning and was delayed twice because of gusts of up to about 40 mph (65 kph) before it was scrapped for the day.

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The last Alpine skiing race of the Beijing Olympics will not be held as planned because of strong winds. A decision has not yet been made about whether to reschedule the event.

The team event was supposed to be held Saturday, but wind gusts at up to about 40 mph (65 kph) led to the announcement of two one-hour delays. The Winter Games end Sunday.

Organizers eventually said the race would not be held Saturday.

A meeting was being held “to discuss the potential rescheduling of the event.”

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Nico Porteous of New Zealand overcame the swirling wind to win the Olympic ski halfpipe final on a day when many skiers couldn’t land their best tricks due to the strong gusts.

Porteous scored a 93 in his opening run on a bitterly cold and breezy morning in the last event at the Genting Snow Park. His score held up in tough conditions where skiers struggled to link big air and spins.

Two-time Olympic champion David Wise took home the silver with his first-run score of 90.75. The 31-year-old Wise was the only winner the men’s event had ever known. He took the title at its Olympic debut in 2014 and again in 2018. Alex Ferreira of the United States threw down a strong first run, twirling his right ski pole at the bottom in elation, to end up with the bronze.

The last competitor to go, Aaron Blunck, crashed into the wall of the halfpipe while trying to land a trick in the gusty conditions. He stayed down for a moment before sitting up.

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Wind gusts of up to about 40 mph (65 kph) are pushing back the start of the last Alpine skiing race of the Beijing Olympics.

The start of the team event has been delayed twice Saturday for a total of two hours and now will not begin before noon local time.

The blue and red gate flags are whipping in the wind along the race course known as “Ice River” at the National Alpine Skiing Center in Yanqing zone.

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Nico Porteous of New Zealand grabbed the lead after the first run in the men’s ski halfpipe final on a challenging day to throw tricks due to swirling wind.

Porteous scored a 93 thanks to back-to-back double cork 1620s. Two-time defending Olympic champion David Wise sits in second place with a score of 90.75 after the first of three runs. Many of the competitors struggled with wind gusts, including Brendan MacKay of Canada who appeared to be blown off line by the wind.

Top qualifier Aaron Blunck called the gusty conditions “gnarly.” Although listed at 13 mph, the wind appears to be swirling in and through the halfpipe. The wind chill hovered around minus 26 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 degrees Celsius.)

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The last Alpine skiing race of the Beijing Olympics is being delayed because of strong wind.

The start of the team event has been pushed back an hour to 11 a.m. local time on Saturday — which is when it originally was scheduled to begin before a forecast of windy conditions prompted organizers to try to get going at 10 a.m.

Gusts of about 25 mph (40 kph) are kicking up snow near the bottom of the race course known as “Ice River” at the National Alpine Skiing Center in Yanqing zone.

The temperature is zero degrees Fahrenheit (minus 18 Celsius) and feels like minus 8 Fahrenheit (minus 22 Celsius).

Mikaela Shiffrin is on the roster for the United States, which faces Slovakia in the opening round. Other first-round matchups are Switzerland vs. China, Italy vs. Russia, Norway vs. Poland, France vs. Czech Republic, Germany vs. Sweden, and Slovenia vs. Canada.

Top-ranked Austria received a first-round bye because there are only 15 nations in the 16-spot bracket.

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More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

The Associated Press

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Plan to increase attendance limits at events: Ajit Pawar

Plan to increase attendance limits at events: Ajit Pawar

Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said that he would raise the issue of restrictions on attendees in events with the chief minister

Pune: In the next step towards Covid relaxations, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said that he would raise the issue of restrictions on attendees in events with the chief minister. Theatres, multiplexes and auditoriums are allowed to operate with 50% capacity.

As per the latest guidelines issued by the state government on January 31, marriages may have guests up to 25% of the capacity of the open ground and banquet halls or 200 whichever is lower. Pawar said that he would discuss it with the chief minister and a decision will be taken at the state level.

“Theatres are allowed to operate with 50% capacity. But for other programmes if the capacity of auditoriums is 2,000 then as per 50% capacity rule 1,000 attendees are not allowed as the cap if for 200 people. Efforts will be taken to increase this count at the state level,” said Pawar.


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