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My guess is most of these players are there 'cause they won their seats, and as long as they were coming to Vegas they dumped everybody into the minivan and made a vacation out of it. If the choice is mom and the kids stay home while dad goes to play the WSOP, or you take everybody along for an inexpensive if imperfect vacation, which will it be?

If you hold the tourney in April, it'll probably be the former and dad will show up, play his one day, stay one more night 'cause it's free despite his wife nagging him to hurry up and get back, and go home.

If you hold the tourney in July, the family will arrive a day early, everybody will eat and gamble and see shows and leave money in the hands of Harrah's, dad will play the tourney and bust out on day 1 while the kids swim and mom dumps dollars into the slots, they'll stay another couple days and swim and eat and play and leave more money in Harrah's hot little hands, and then go home.

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A couple years ago (when I still watched tournament coverage), ESPN did one of their human interest features on the winner of one of the tournaments who had driven out in his RV with wife and daughter.

Thank Bav is spot on here. If a player wins his seat either online or in a B&M tournament, there's usually some travel expense money also. Can make for a cheap vacation in a city that still has enough kid-friendly attractions to keep them busy, more than enough shopping (low to high end) and spas to keep moms happy, and some decent baby-sitting options (Kids Tyme in a lot of locals' casinos for starts) for the parents to have a night or two out, kids free. And it's easier to pull this off when the kids are out of school.