[ QUOTE ]
heres a few guesses:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...e=0&fpart=1
[/ QUOTE ]
seems like lots of those guesses were made before Stars/FT decided to just give cash to all their qualifers instead of pre-registering them all. my guess is < 10% of these people actually show up in Vegas to play the ME. those 2 rooms alone accounted for > 2,000 players last year. I'm not sure what Pokeroom.com and UB are doing, but my guess is something similar.
on top of that, Party + a bunch of smaller rooms have left the US completely. these places accounted for 2,000 - 2,500 (my guess) last year.
in total last year, there were around 5,000 online qualifers, and very few of them are going to be there this year. People who will go are the Europeans from non-US facing rooms.
Last year there were about 8,700 total players.
I would say somewhere in the 4,000 - 5,000 person range this year seems about right