Are some top player's broke?

[srblan]

I don't think that very many people make a living on the tourney circuit. I could be mistaken, but the variance would be much too high to try to live off of that income. One of the reasons that the top cash game players choose to play in tournaments is because of the overlay that they get. The internet satellites and supersatellites provide a ton of dead money in the WPT events, so they play because it is a good investment if they can manage to eek out a win.