Has WSOP gotten too big?

Am I the only one who thinks that slogging your way through 5000+ entries is no way to crown the world champion? Especially since many (most?) of the entries came from online qualifiers and are essentially freerolling? Here's my idea for a fair tourney that would give us a great champion:

1) Limit field to 250 entries

2) Everyone who enters must buy in for $25,000 cash in person the day before.

3) Automatic qualifiers include all former WSOP main event winners and (or up to if that is a better option) top 200 NL players based on point system (to be determined what that is later). ALL qualifiers still must put up the $25,000. (my reasoning is that this will give old timers like Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim and others the opportunity to enter as I doubt they want to go through the points qualifier every year).

4) The final 50 spots are open to the public but anyone who wants to enter must have $25,000 in cash at the entry cage the day before. In order to make it fair they could hand out wristbands and hold a lottery to determine the 50. Each of those 50 would then have to pony up all the money right then and have their drivers license (or passport) scanned and it would have to match when they sat down the next day. (this would be good for local B&M satellite's).

With these rules you'd have a WSOP with fantastic star power and 50 (or maybe more if all 200 qualifiers didn't enter) open entries to spice things up. At $25,000 per that would be $6,250,000 total prize. 40% grand prize would be $2,500,000 which is still a hell of a lot of money. Of course they could increase the entry fee even more. ESPN would still get a good show because they could focus more on each episode.

Let the fun begin. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]