The great game of pot-limit Omaha is enjoying a surge in popularity of late, but if the first week of the 2025 World Series of Poker is an indicator, it may be on an even faster pace than expected.
The fifth event of the 2025 WSOP kicked off Thursday, and the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha tournament drew a field of 757 total entries, generating a prize pool of over $3.5 million. That outpaced the 733 entries for the 2024 edition of this event, but more notably, dwarfs the turnout of an identically priced no-limit hold’em event that immediately preceded it.
The third event of the series, a $5,000, eight-handed no-limit hold’em tournament that started one day earlier, generated a field of 693 entrants. That is an improvement on the first $5,000 no-limit hold’em event of the 2024 WSOP, which also featured a bounty on former WSOP main event champions, but stands notably lower than its PLO counterpart.
Is Pot Limit Omaha taking over?
Registration has just closed in Event #5: $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha with 757 total entries and $3.7m in the prize pool.
This means that the PLO drew more entrants than the $5K NLH which had 693 entrants and $3.2m in the prize pool.#WSOP2025 pic.twitter.com/twHMYzCue2
— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) May 30, 2025
Pot-limit Omaha events have been hitting considerable milestones over the last few years, and even in the last week. At the Triton Poker Montenegro series, Ben Tollerene won $2,390,000 in a $100,000 buy-in pot-limit Omaha event, the largest ever prize for a PLO tournament.
Over the last two years, similarly eye-popping prizes have been won in pot-limit Omaha events at the WSOP. In 2023, Ka Kwan Lau won $2,294,756 and the gold bracelet after outlasting a field of 449 to win the $25,000 PLO high roller. One year ago, despite a slight flattening of the payout structure, David Eldridge outlasted a field of 476 and earned $2,246,728 in the 2024 WSOP $25,000 pot-limit Omaha high roller.
