2026 World Series Of Poker Main Event Draws 9,208 Entries Poker News
But the biggest move of the day, and the story to keep an eye on heading into Tuesday night’s WSOP main event final table action, belongs to Han Feng. The first of three days of action at the 2026 World Series of Poker main event final table is in the books. This very last event concludes PokerNews’ live coverage of the 2026 World Series of Poker until the WSOP Main Event final table, which will be played from August 3-5. Of the 255 players who made the money, only 95 survived through Level 21 to earn a 60-minute dinner break before returning for the final sprint to the bracelet. In 2023, GGPoker sent at least 1,000 players to WSOP Paradise through a series of online qualifiers.
WSOP Main Event Champions 1970-2025
Don’t forget to mark your calendars for the start of the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em WSOP Main Event, as airing returns to ESPN from Thursday, July 2 through Monday, July 13, with a special three-day final table finale taking place Monday, August 3 through Wednesday, August 5. Mystery bounties in the $550 Mini Mystery Millions come into play on day two of the event, scheduled for Sunday, May 31, with cards in the air at 1 P.M. While the buy-in may be lower for the Mini Mystery Millions compared to the Mystery Millions, there is still great riches for the poker player lucky enough to win the biggest bounty. Each poker player is permitted 2 re-entries per flight. The surviving finalists will reconvene 20 days later for a live, three-day televised finale airing August 3-5 from 9pm-12am EST. Under the new agreement, poker fans can expect wall-to-wall coverage, with each tournament day receiving a minimum of six hours of programming.
🎤🔥@brucebuffer just delivered a “Shuffle up and deal! But a late dip puts him in a perilous position heading into Tuesday afternoon’s session. He’ll take 106,500,000 into night two of this three-day marathon. The 22-year-old bagged up 212,000,000 to remain the favorite to walk away with the championship bracelet and the first-place prize of $10,000,000.
Jing brought a large sum of cash from Hustler Casino and used it to buy into the $100-$200 no-limit hold’em game. There are also Day 2s in the $25,000 PLO with the survivors from its two starting flights combining for the first time at 12 p.m., and the $2,500 Freezeout, which gets underway an hour later at 1 p.m. Other notables through to Day 3 include Matt Glantz (625,000), Main Event final tablist John Wasnock (410,000), and Karina Jett (380,000). They will have a day’s rest before returning for Day 3 on Thursday. There were plenty of bracelet winners advancing from Day 1b in the Seniors Championship. Calvin Anderson who also ended Day 1 with the chip lead, bagged the overall chip lead on Day 2 as well, having already won this event in 2018.

The 2024 World Series of Poker gets underway on Tuesday, May 28 and runs through Wednesday, July 17, 2024. Mark your calendars and bank those vacation days. “But it’s time to turn the page and begin the countdown to 2024. “There’s not much more that can be said about what a special year 2023 was for the WSOP and the game of poker,” said Ty Stewart, SVP and Executive Director of the World Series of Poker.
There was only one tournament, the $25K, where I had to re-enter. Daniel Negreanu has made it crystal clear that pot-limit Omaha (PLO) is his game right now. Daniel Negreanu reveals why PLO is his game of choice, Josh Arieh’s influence and how he beat Artur Martirosian heads-up for his eighth bracelet. In the end, McKeehen outlasted 673 entries in the $5,300 buy-in to score a top prize of $462,600, which was adjusted during heads-up play.
The second woman of the series to nab a World Series of Poker bracelet, Michelle Chin, defeats Daniel Strelitz heads-up to claim victory in the $1,500 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw for his maiden bracelet. Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews for all the latest news on the final nine before they battle for poker’s most prestigious title! After hanging on for quite some time, Cynthia Vencebi eventually bowed out in fifth place.
Not a bad payday for a roughly $1,765 buy-in. If you’re playing at a higher level, or if you just want to stop by and watch those who are, the PokerGO Tour will be back on the beat with its fall schedule. No matter where you might toss the dart on the calendar, you’ll find something to play, so we did a deep dive on the schedule to map out the rest of 2026. The World Series of Poker is gone but poker never stops in Las Vegas. It was definitely the summer of PLO for me, where my biggest scores came. There were a couple of spots where if he had called, the tournament would have been over.
Since I mostly play high-stakes events in the US, which normally start and finish late, I might be more suited to the pace of US high-stakes tournaments because I’m a night owl. How are APT events different from tournaments that you play in the United States? Tony ‘Ren’ Lin has become one of the most recognizable and successful players in the world, crushing the high-stakes tournament scene to the tune of over $20M in Hendon Mob-recorded earnings. Towards the tail end of my career, as Black Friday’s immediate effects had worn off and people realized the new status quo was never going to be the boom again, players became very wary of the media. Poker players during that era had television identities, online personas, forum reputations, and private selves that could be very different from one another.
The season finale has taken place at Wynn Las Vegas over the last few years, but competition with WSOP Paradise is fierce. While a third APT win hasn’t yet been in the cards for him so far in Incheon, he did finish 6th of 184 entries in the $2K High Roller on Thursday for just over $17K in his third career cash on the tour. Most of my family is in China, especially my mom, and I want to have more time to spend with her.
You entered a poker industry that was overwhelmingly male, both at the tables and in the media. What would someone entering the WSOP media room today struggle to understand about the atmosphere, workload, access, and personalities of the press corps you joined? By the end of Bellagio Cup, my boss Jeff Holsey offered me a full-time role, but only if I promised not to drop out of school to take it. It wasn’t I was an amazing writer or that I had some elite level of poker acumen. In the meantime, I was quietly developing a very unique skill set virtually no one else had. As a poker fan, I got behind the ropes access to everything and made money to boot, so it always felt like a blessing.
The biggest buy-in event in WSOP history is the $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop, held in 2012, 2014 and 2018. In 2026, the lowest buy-in event was $300 (The Gladiators of Poker) and the biggest buy-in event was $250,000 (Super High Roller). The World Series of Poker is held ever summer at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. There was also still time for another legend to write himself into the record books. That year saw the first non-American win the Main Event as Mansour Matloubi triumphed, and 1991 saw the first prize reach $1,000,000 for the first time. The start of the 1980s was heralded by back-to-back wins for Stu Ungar and the following year, the field surpassed 100 for the first time.
Players will be able to register 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is super straightforward to play in the 2024 World Series of Poker as long as you have the buy-in and are aged 21 or over. The property originally opened in 1973 and was fully renovated in time for the 2023 World Series of Poker.
As the exclusive destination for live updates from poker’s most prestigious festival, PokerNews will deliver industry-leading coverage from every corner of the action this summer. The numbers are in for the 2026 World Series of Poker $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event. Continuing to build upon his poker legacy after winning “The Big One”, Cada has won three more WSOP bracelets since his historic victory in 2009, and has over $14 million in career WSOP tournament winnings. In 2009, Michigan native and professional poker player Joe Cada became the youngest poker player in history to win the WSOP Main Event. The debut of the delayed WSOP Main Event final table in 2008 proved a resounding success, with ratings of the televised event increasing 49 percent from the previous year and garnering 2.4 million viewers, totals that outperformed ESPN’s average viewership of both the NBA and MLB. Displaying one of the greatest hot streaks in WSOP history, TV producer Jamie Gold would cruise through the entirety of the tournament, capturing the 2006 WSOP Main Event title and the largest prize in the event’s history.

Official End of Day 1d Chip Counts (full)
There were a few players like Kathy Liebert, JJ Liu, and Jennifer Harman that weren’t sexualized all the time, but the default for players and media personalities alike was to frame them in a sexy way. Maxx Coleman is the only player remaining without a final-table appearance in this tournament. Seven-time bracelet winner Josh Arieh and three-time bracelet winner Paul Volpe are both at their third PPC final tables. On what would ultimately be the 108th, and final, hand of day 9 of the 2026 WSOP main event, Feng capped off his incredible spin-up with one more pot at Saaskilahti’s expense. The two shortest players to start the day, Evagoras Evagorou and Feng, were both ground down to single-digit big blind stacks during the early action. The 39-year-old spent much of Monday’s action in second place, and Saaskilahti was one of the few players to even briefly halt Jumalon’s overwhelming, consistent pressure throughout the day.
As usual, the PokerNews live reporting team will be on the floor to provide all the action until a champion has been crowned, and the same also applies to all other remaining 2025 WSOP gold bracelets as well. With the start of Level 8 on Day 2d this upcoming Monday, July 6, 2025, the late registration will officially close, and the annual flagship tournament is set to conclude on July 16 in Las Vegas. The respective survivors of each of the four opening flights will return to their seats at noon local time and play another five levels of two hours each. The 2025 WSOP Main Event bracelet was also revealed to the public today and presented by American magician and illusionist Criss Angel on the stage of the Horseshoe Event Center. While many poker pros joined the action today, thousands of enthusiasts from all over the world also joined the fray along with numerous celebrities.
As it turns out, it’s been a long time coming for the North Wales, Pennsylvania pro. Players will be able to play multiple Venom starting flights and combine their stacks for Day 2. Meanwhile, the PLO event features a $3M prize pool, with bounties that range from $5K to $250K. Will WPT scale down the event and return to Vegas in December, or move to a less crowded spot in January?
When we got down to heads-up, he had become handcuffed and in really bad shape because he had completely run out of time banks. Sure, there are times when you get coolered, and you’ve got to put it in. I never really worked on preflop in no-limit hold’em. I’ve always felt that in no-limit hold’em post-flop, my hand reading skills are much better than preflop. My types of mistakes in PLO are not reraising, four-betting, and all that stuff – it’s just playing too many hands, which is fine.
As he looks to navigate his way through day 8 of poker’s world championship, those experiences could prove incredibly valuable. Two months ago, in his home country, Trayner won the return of the Aussie Millions main event, for just shy of another $1 million. Over the last two years, Trayner has navigated some massive fields and big spots in major live tournaments. Usually, I play poker with headphones, and I’m very locked in.
The Summer Slam Series Takes Over JackPoker This August

Even with those two knockouts, Negreanu remained ahead going into three-handed play. Martirosian’s surge up the leaderboard continued after he eliminated bracelet winner Philip Sternheimer in fourth place ($705,448). Yosuke Miki’s flush draw turned into a rivered straight to best the flopped set of tens of pokernewsdaily.com Sergio Martinez Gonzalez, ending the Spaniard’s run in seventh place ($312,233). Ausmus eventually settled for $259,047 as the eighth-place finisher.
- You’ll also be able to track daily results and navigate the series with ease, with access to structure sheets, schedules, chip counts, payouts, and more.
- Two-time WSOP winner Antonio Galiana of Spain is one of eight European players still in the field.
- As another exciting stretch of the series comes to a close, take a look back at the newly crowned champions from the past few days at poker’s most prestigious tournament festival.
- Prior to the introduction of gold bracelets, WSOP event winners received grey trophies for their accomplishment.
- When you later worked on the official WSOP side, how did your understanding of the event change?
Today, we continue that tradition with fresh daily updates, breaking news, tournament coverage, player stories, and expert insights that keep you connected to the fast-moving poker world. But high-stakes poker players typically have large amounts of cash and casino chips. Just eight players remain, with bracelet winner Eric Rodawig and former German Soccer pro and poker enthusiast Max Kruse rounding out the top three. A few days later, Super High Roller Bowl XI rolls out on Oct. 8 with a $103,000 buy-in for no-limit hold’em players. Have you talked to American players about coming to play APT events? While the other students in her graduate program spent the summer teaching or taking classes, Welman headed to Las Vegas under the extremely convenient premise that the trip would further her research into poker players.
PokerListings is one of the world’s oldest trusted poker sites. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the postponement of the World Series of Poker for the first time in its history. Maurice Hawkins holds the record for most circuit rings with 25.
Along the way, she helped turn live updates, podcasts, video, and streaming into something more than a scoreboard and and learned what gets lost when everybody is forced to consume poker the same way. The six-time bracelet winner got all in with a pair of tens facing eights and deuces on fifth street. The two-time bracelet winner has cashed twice, though, placing 13th and 14th in 2023 and 2024, respectively. The chip leader is eight-time bracelet winner Benny Glaser, who added three wins to his tally in 2025.
CardPlayer.com is the world’s oldest and most well-respected poker magazine and online gambling guide. He now sits in 10th place in the POY race standings presented by CoinPoker, having made 11 final tables and won three titles so far in 2026. In the final hand of the tournament, Martirosian three-bet shoved over Negreanu’s button pot with A♣9♦8♦8♥.

The brand-new poker series was highlighted by a $5,000 Main Event that offered a $15 million guarantee, as well as the introduction of GGPoker’s innovative OnLive concept. As always, PokerNews will be on the floor from first shuffle to last bag as the final table of the 2026 WSOP Main Event is set. Local time on Monday, July 13, with blinds of 300,000/600,000 and a 600,000 big blind ante.
I think this was a time where there was a very narrow idea of what women in poker could really do. I always thought it was an advantage to be a woman in the tournament reporting space because poker tournaments are very boring and these guys are stuck in their seats and just want someone to talk to. But, as someone who walked by the media room a half dozen times this summer and never saw a soul inside it, I doubt people would grasp just how many people were in there. So, by the end of my first summer, I picked up an extra gig working for the WPT as a tournament reporter for Bellagio Cup. On my first day I remember the time for the first post was drawing near and I just sat at the computer afraid I would mess it up.
