petergrfn:
Yes, I did fashion my tag line after the one used by the famous Mike Sexton, who is one of the hosts and I might add one of the people responsible for bringing the WPT (World Poker Tour) into the public view. He is a senior like myself and a great poker player in his own right. In fact, this year Mike decided to play some and messed around and won the Tournament of Champions. He began by winning one of the circuit events which gave him an invitation to the Tournament.
Mike brought home a $1,000,000 prize. He promply announced he was giving at least half of it to his favorite charity. What a guy!!! Many of us are extremely proud of him.
Obviously, the WPT is not near as lucritive as the WSOP which you correctly indicated paid $12,000,000 to this years winner, Jamie Gold. However, the World Series OF Poker had 9,500 plus entrants in the main event. The buy-in was $10,000 each, which is a far cry from what I spend on Lottery tickets.
I love to deal with statistics so I will give you an even bigger number. This year in Austrailia, which has become a huge poker playing continent, they have proposed a $60,000,000 winner take all tournament. That's 60 million and the buy-in is huge something like several hundred thousand. Next year they propose 75 million to the winner and the following year at least a 100 million dollar prize will go to the winner. Boy, you have to be well heeled to even play in it, let alone win. Can you imagine sitting down to play and losing your buy-in in less than 30 minutes when it could be five hundred thousand dollars? This frequently happens at ten thousand buy-in events.
Anyway back to playing the Lottery. That diversion makes blood squirt out of my eyes just thinking about it.
I hope all your Picks are Winners and your Winners are Monsters
Floridian