A total of 6,494 participants entered the Main Event at the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, WSOP officials announced.

The Main Event, which began Friday, is a no-limit Texas hold ‘em tournament with a buy-in of $10,000.

It is the final tournament of the 57-tournament WSOP.

The 6,494 entrants is the third-highest total ever for a WSOP Main Event.

The high was the 8,773 participants who entered the 2006 WSOP Main Event, which was won by Jamie Gold of Los Angeles.

He earned $12 million for the victory.

Last year’s WSOP Main Event drew 6,844 entrants, the second-highest total ever for a WSOP Main Event.

The 2008 WSOP Main Event was won by Peter Eastgate of Denmark, who earned $9.15 million for the victory.

According to WSOP officials, the total prize pool for the 2009 WSOP Main Event will be about $61 million.

The top 648 finishers in the ‘09 Main Event will receive cash payouts, with the winner earning about $8.6 million, WSOP officials said.

The number of entrants to this year’s Main Event could have been even higher.

That’s because about 500 people who attempted to register for the Main Event on Monday, the fourth of four “opening days” for the event, were turned away because capacity for the day had been reached.

Among those turned away and shut out of the Main Event were previous WSOP championship gold bracelet-winners T.J. Cloutier (who has five), Ted Forrest (four) and Erick Lindgren (one).

To rectify the situation, WSOP officials said they considered two alternatives: adding another “opening day” or increasing the number of players at each table from nine to ten.

In the end, WSOP officials declined to do either, saying neither option was fair to other players who had registered in time.

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