Here's a statistic for you.

Back in 2003, when Team PokerStars' Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker, PokerStars sent 33 people to the main event. At the time, that seemed like a lot. Still, Moneymaker was just one of PokerStars' 33 horses in a race that was more than 800 strong.

Sunday, as the WSOP satellites on PokerStars kicked off, most of the PokerStars staff noticed something rather interesting. Sunday night's $650 WSOP super satellite had 596 entrants. Know how many WSOP main event seats that awarded?

Yep. Thirty-three.

In case you dozed off for a second, let's recap. PokerStars gave away as many seats last night as it did in all of 2003.

What's more, I just noticed that one of the people who qualified last night was none other than Bernard "Dogger9" Lee. Lee qualified on PokerStars for the WSOP last year, took 13th place, and won $400,000. Since then, the marketing man has been writing a poker column for the Boston Herald, playing poker, and cashing as often as he can. Lee was kind enough to write his story for the PokerStars Blog last year. Be sure to check out the Bernard Lee story when you have some time to read about what it is like to play in the biggest field in poker history. [Editor's upddate: Lee has also recently started as a columnist for ESPN.com. Click here to visit his recent column.]

As of this moment, 475 people have qualified for the World Series of Poker main event on PokerStars.com. Twenty-six of those people qualified using nothing more than their Frequent Player Points. And, unless my eyes deceive me, it's not even May yet. There are still two months to go before the main event kicks off.

If you care to take a shot at your seat, satellites are running all the time. All you have to do is click Events and WSOP in your game lobby to get started.

Thirty-three seats last night. Sheesh.