The great unknown

Tuesday, May 29, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

You heard it here first. The winner of the 2007 World Series of Poker championship event will be ...

(Drum roll, please.)

Someone you never heard of.

"Of course, it's a no-brainer," said Larry Grossman, Las Vegas gaming analyst, photographer and longtime World Series of Poker aficionado. "I've been saying for four years that nobody will know the name of the winner."

It comes down to sheer numbers. With fields as large as the 8,773 entrants who played in the $10,000 buy-in no-limit Texas hold 'em championship tournament last year, the elements of luck and randomness are extremely difficult to overcome.

Even in a 12-day tournament like this year's "Big One," as the main event has long been nicknamed, it's much more likely the eventual winner will be an amateur player taking a shot at a big score, a middling pro or an online qualifier than an accomplished elite professional poker player.

"The odds are against a recognized pro making it through to win," Grossman said.

The 38th annual World Series of Poker, the centerpiece of poker's calendar, begins Friday at the Rio with a $5,000 buy-in mixed Texas hold 'em limit/no limit event. It's the first of 55 "bracelet events" in 2007 - meaning the winner earns a gold championship bracelet along with the prize money.

The five-day HORSE mixed-games tournament scheduled to begin June 24 carries the World Series' biggest buy-in at $50,000, but the championship event, scheduled for July 6-17, remains the most eagerly awaited competition - not only on the World Series slate, but in all of poker.

The prize pool will be determined by the number of entrants. Last year, Jamie Gold of Malibu, Calif., collected a record $12 million top prize by winning the Big One.

Even a tournament pro who brings a hot hand into the World Series , such as Cory Carroll of Halifax, Nova Scotia, acknowledges how tough it is for a professional player to navigate such a deep field.

"With so many people in there, there's just so much luck involved," said Carroll, who won the World Series of Poker circuit tournament at Caesars Palace earlier this month, then finished second in the World Poker Tour Mirage Poker Showdown last week.

"I think it's a safe bet that there will be unknowns at the final table if not an unknown winner."

The size of the field in this year's main event has also been a subject of speculation, as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, signed by President Bush last fall, is expected to cut down on the number of players who win their buy-in through Internet poker rooms. The act aims to crack down on Internet gambling by Americans by severely restricting financial transactions linked to online gambling.

Although there is no affiliation between Harrah's, which owns the World Series, and the online poker sites, Card Player magazine estimated that perhaps half of last year's entrants won their way in by playing on the Internet.

Harrah's and World Series officials offered no prediction about the size of the field, but said they were using an estimate of 10,000 players for planning purposes .

Grossman said in his best estimate, 6,800 to 7,600 players will compete in this year's main event. In other words, the online crackdown will have an effect, just not a devastating one.

For Carroll, those figures add up to plenty of amateurs playing out of their league as they chase their dream of making a mark in poker history.

"I'm not going to lie to you," Carroll said. "A lot of people play pretty bad in these things."