BY TOM SOMACH

The top prizes at the next World Series of Poker (WSOP) won’t be worth as much as last year’s top prizes, WSOP officials announced.

The differences will be made up, however, by increasing the size of runner-up prizes, they announced.

It’s the WSOP’s version of “spread the wealth.”

In an official statement, the WSOP said most players who finish in the money in 2007 WSOP events will receive a higher percentage of the prize pools than last year.

“We are increasing the return to players who, after hours or days of grueling competition, are able to reach the money,” said Howard Greenbaum, regional vice-president of specialty gaming for Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc., which owns the WSOP. “Our goal is to keep more money circulating among more people in the poker community.”

While the final payout schedule for each WSOP event depends on the final number of entrants, a comparison of the actual payouts for the 2006 Main Event with what they would have been under the new payout schedule illustrates the differences, WSOP officials said.

Overall, 846 players last year would have won substantially more money, and in some cases, more than double what they collected in 2006, they said.

The top 27 players would have received less, however, they said.

The WSOP provided these examples: the 2006 Main Event would have paid $22,266 for 873rd through 775th places, up from $14,605 or $15,512. Places 82 through 73 would have paid $126,173, up from $66,010. First place would have paid $10,028,715, down from $12 million, while second place would have been worth $5,442,769, down from $6,105,900.

“We discussed this concept with our poker operations team and with members of the WSOP Players Advisory Council and the consensus was that spreading the wealth is the right thing to do,” said Greenbaum.

“The new schedules are designed to increase the rewards to players who finish in the money but don’t reach the final table.”

The new payout schedules are posted at the WSOP’s website,=A0 www.worldseriesofpoker.com, and reveal the percentage payouts for different numbers of players for different games.

The 2007 WSOP is scheduled to begin June 1 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, and is to last six weeks.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)