World Series Of Poker Kicks Off Today

WSOP THE 57TH ANNUAL WORLD SERIES OF POKER GETS UNDERWAY TODAY

Glaser has also come close to winning this event before,  finishing fourth in 2022. Ivey has more than $54.9 million in prior earnings and has locked up at least $226,172 by making it down to the final six from a field of 108 entries in this year’s PPC. The champion will add theirs to the Chip Reese Memorial trophy, in addition to earning a WSOP bracelet and the top prize of $1,343,764. The day 10 broadcast kicks off on ESPN at 8 p.m. Action resumes on Tuesday, Aug. 4, at approximately 4 p.m.

When the Final Table resumes on August 3, play is scheduled over three days until an outright champion is crowned. To get to this moment, these nine individuals had to battle through marathon sessions, overcoming the mental and physical fatigue of elite tournament poker to outlast thousands of the world’s best professionals and passionate amateurs alike. Alex Foxen did almost as well, totalling 839,000 by the close of play, with Chino Rheem (588,000) also looking strong as he bids to end his long wait for a WSOP bracelet by winning the biggest one of all. Only 1,388 to go for Grinder, who climbed to 1.2 million chips but eventually ended the day on a still above-average 615,000. It was quite the opposite case for Michael Mizrachi as the reigning world champion once again made a strong argument for becoming the only player to retain the title of Main Event champion in the post-Moneymaker era.

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.

World Series Of Poker Kicks Off Today

Las Vegas, Nevada (May 26, 2026) – After a festive Memorial Day weekend here in Sin City, the biggest poker series of the year is ready to get underway! ESPN first broadcast the WSOP Main Event in 1978 and remained the dominant broadcaster of the event for decades, helping to fuel the global poker boom. Known for innovative hits like Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli (the “ManningCast”) and Netflix’s “Quarterback” and “Receiver”, Omaha Productions will apply its signature storytelling lens to the poker table.

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.

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.

Upcoming Tournaments

Be sure to tune in for this high-stakes event. The WSOP has taken place in pokernewsdaily.com Las Vegas every year since its inception in 1970, making Sin City the indisputable home of the annual tournament. The field will be the biggest of the summer, attracting a variety of competitors, from amatuers to professionals and even high rollers.

The average stack of 26,317,142 represents just shy of 44 big blinds when play resumes. Zhang entered the day as one of the short stacks and was unable to spin it up, taking home $150,000 for her efforts! It increased her career tournament earnings to $482,761. Zhang took a race shortly after play began, with her Q♠7♠ unable to outrun the 5♥5♣ of Thomas Clack. The 36-year-old fashion brand consultant from Shanghai, China came into the day as one of the very shortest stacks, having lost the majority of her stack late on day 6 with A♣K♠ against J♥J♦ for Felix Kuemayr.

The last poker player to pull off back-to-back victories in the WSOP Main Event, Chan achieved poker immortality by continuing to build on his historic WSOP success, becoming the first player to win 10 WSOP bracelets in 2005. While all-time poker great Johnny Chan won his first WSOP bracelet in a Limit Hold’em event during the 1985 WSOP, his greatest poker accomplishment would begin two years later. A member of the PokerCoaching.com pro team, much of Hendrix’s over $8 million in live tournament winnings come from wins in tournaments on the PokerGO Tour as well as plenty of deep runs in WSOP events. No stranger to success on the felt, Hallaert has racked up a number of poker tournament titles across poker tournament series around Europe, contributing to $5.9 million in live tournament winnings across his career. A historic WSOP Main Event final table that includes not only a four-time Poker Players Championship winner but also the first woman since 1995, poker fans around the world look forward to a highly anticipated conclusion to the 2025 WSOP Main Event.

Those are just the first two bracelet events out of 100 this summer (plus 30 online at WSOP Online). As Japanese poker players continue to excel at the 2026 WSOP, Daisuke Ogita wins the largest score of his poker career and his first WSOP bracelet. While the biggest poker tournament in the world continues to unfold, WSOP bracelets continue to be won in other WSOP events. Las Vegas, Nevada (July 2, 2026) – Today is the day thousands of poker players from around the world have been waiting for.

Visit the Card Player 2026 World Series of Poker landing page for schedules, news, interviews, and the latest event results. Stapleton, who signed on with WSOP after 15 years with PokerStars, will play a large role in the broadcasts as well, as will Jeff Platt, another recent WSOP signing. The broadcast is set to feature Ali Nejad, David Williams, Lon MacEachern, and Norman Chad in commentary roles throughout the summer. According to the WSOP’s website viewers can, “Watch every 2026 WSOP event for free on the official WSOP YouTube channel.”

He sits one spot ahead of his wife, Kristen Foxen, who won her sixth bracelet just a week earlier to extend her leads on both the women’s all-time money list and WSOP titles leaderboards. The former collegiate football player now has $60,565,402 in career cashes to his name after this victory. “I think your career is really about repeated performance and an entire body of work, rather than one event proving something,” Foxen told PokerNews live reporters after closing out the win. In fact, from 2016 through 2025, he had the second-best record of any player on the planet when it comes to Card Player Player of the Year points accumulated. Alex Foxen has been an elite poker tournament performer over the past decade. In the last three years in the WSOP main event, Nagami finished in 21st in 2024, 170th in 2025, and now 23rd place ($325,000) in 2026.

The 57th-annual running of this storied event attracted 9,208 entries by the time registration officially closed, making it the fourth-largest yet. Further adding to a historic summer, Japanese poker pro Shiina Okamoto made history by becoming the first woman to win the WSOP Ladies Event in back-to-back years. Winning the two toughest poker tournaments in a single year, an accomplishment many thought was impossible, the governing board of the Poker Hall of Fame held an emergency vote, and unanimously voted Mizrachi into the Hall of Fame. Moving to the Horseshoe and Paris in 2022, for the first time in the event’s history, the WSOP would be held on the Las Vegas Strip. Since Spinella’s lone WSOP bracelet victory in 2015, he has gone on to win five WSOP Circuit rings and accrue over $1.7 million in WSOP tournament winnings. From the momentum spurred by Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP Main Event in 2003 and the ensuing Poker Boom, the WSOP saw record attendance year after year, culminating in the largest tournaments in the event’s history.

Yet, it took until late on day 5 of the 2026 WSOP main event for Mizrachi’s shot at another impossibility to come to an end. Ensan was one of four WSOP main event champions who started day 5 with hopes of repeating their former glory. Only one previous WSOP main event champion reached day 6, and that’s 2019 winner Hossein Ensan.

Stay connected with PokerNews for the latest updates and event information as it becomes available. 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. With nearly 100,000 square feet of gaming space, over 2,900 rooms, and iconic replicas of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, Paris Las Vegas delivers both grandeur and excitement. Also operated by Caesars Entertainment, this French-themed casino has been a standout venue since it opened in 1999.

The WSOP portfolio of events includes approximately 50 WSOP Circuit Events annually across five continents, WSOP Europe (since 2007), WSOP Paradise (since 2023) and the record-breaking WSOP Online festival. Featuring a comprehensive slate of tournaments in every major poker variation, the WSOP is poker’s longest-running tournament dating back to 1970. The World Series of Poker® is the largest, richest and most prestigious gaming event and poker brand in the world, having awarded more than $4 billion in prize money over the past six decades. Lucas Jumalon of Spokane, Wash., holds a commanding chip lead entering the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event. Lucas Jumalon will battle Lauri Saaskilahti in heads-up play when the World Series of Poker Main Event continues Wednesday at Horseshoe Events Center. Lucas Jumalon defeated Lauri Saaskilahti during heads-up play and outlasted a field of 9,208 entrants to win the World Series of Poker Main Event on Wednesday.

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.

The day belonged to Sasha Liu, however, who bagged a big chip lead when she ended Day 3 on 2,364,000 chips, some way clear of second-placed Martin Zamani (1,963,000), with Levon Khachatryan (1,745,000), Robert Gill (1,604,000) and Zdenek Zizka (1,576,000) rounding out the top five. Day 3 of the 2026 WSOP Main Event was the most dramatic yet as former champions either thrived or saw their tournament chances die in thrilling fashion. Though 2026 payment methods haven’t been confirmed yet, it’s expected to include cash, credit/debit cards, ACH transfers, wire transfers, and tournament buy-in chips or credits, similar to previous years. Among them will be Jeff Platt, who last month announced a new role with the WSOP after a near decade-long association with previous series broadcaster PokerGO. Or, even better, there’s a chance you could capture both pieces of sought-after poker jewelry.

Michelle Chin joins Kristen Foxen as the only women thus far to win bracelets at the 2026 WSOP. Las Vegas, Nevada (June 25, 2026) – The 2026 World Series of Poker continues to produce unforgettable moments as the summer grind rolls on in Las Vegas. A few hands later, Wong’s ace-deuce held against Nakai’s eight-nine, securing the victory and sending the bracelet to Wong. Nakai and Wong began heads-up play with almost identical stacks. He eventually moved all in with ace-queen but lost a coin flip to Wong’s pocket nines.

The 62-year-old German ended day 7 in seventh place overall, and maintained his chance to become the first repeat WSOP main event champion since Stu Ungar won his third main event in 1997. The 2026 World Series of Poker $10,000 no-limit hold’em main event has reached a crucial juncture. We offer daily poker and casino news, poker professionals’ blogs and tweets, exclusive gambling videos, thousands of free gambling articles, as well as coverage from all major poker tournaments in the world. All remaining players have locked up at least $57,500 from a prize pool of $85,634,400.

• If you play for real money, make sure that you do not play for more than you can afford losing, and that you only play at safe and regulated operators.
• Everyone who made day 8 is guaranteed at least $325,000, but the prospect of the bracelet and a first-place prize of $10,000,000 is tantalizingly close.
• However, if you are asking about my academic research, the paper I had written was about non-verbal communication among poker cohorts, so that really didn’t address the scope of the WSOP.
• The full schedule released in February, showing 100 bracelet events with buy-ins ranging from $300 to $250,000.

Thus, it’s unlikely Las Vegas casinos will relax this type of scrutiny any time soon. In 2018, Dennis Blieden won the World Poker Tour Los Angeles Poker Classic main event for $1 million. 2024 WSOP main event champion Jonathan Tamayo told Card Player he needed to show a copy of his tax returns when he deposited cash. Sadly, was locked out of playing yesterday because of it.

It was simply that I knew which online screennames belonged to which real-life poker tournament participants. This time around, he was the player with the big pocket pair facing two overcards. Throughout this tournament, I played like very, very good poker. Jamie Shaevel is in sixth place, with 33,000,000, while three-time bracelet winner Greg Mueller rounds out the final seven with 29,500,000. The two players then doubled through each other before Wong made a good river call to seize a commanding lead.

How much you can win at the 2024 WSOP varies from event to event. However, some poker experience is recommended Yes, beginners can play at the 2024 WSOP. You do not need to be American to play in the 2024 WSOP. Players have a variety of ways to quality for the WSOP, including international and domestic online satellites on GGPoker and WSOP.com.

This summer I saw my former WPT colleagues, Mickey Doft and BJ Nemeth, both working with the streaming crew in Vegas. If they want only the fun and sanitized poker stories, that is what you write. So, if livestreams are paramount, they can demand you delay your updates and you have to say yes. You are also beholden to your client to deliver a product they want. However, since the media has largely moved in-house or to a model in which the outlet is a contractor of the casino or tour, you only get one version of the story. On the flip side, I think poker tours consolidating media in house or to official contractors has really killed the rest of poker content.

Winning his first WSOP bracelet as well as the highest score of his poker tournament career, cash game grinder Markus Gonsalves joins one of poker’s most exclusive clubs. International satellites to WSOP live events are hosted exclusively at GGPoker, the World’s Biggest Poker Room. In 2025, the flagship event in Las Vegas attracted 246,960 entrants and awarded more than $481 million in prize money – both all-time records for the series. After years of grinding on the felt towards poker’s biggest prize, poker pro Dylan Smith finally nabs his first WSOP bracelet in the $2,500 Mixed Big Bet Event. Defeating Aubrey Williams in a thrilling heads-up duel, Skye Chen not only scores her first live tournament cash, but her first WSOP bracelet. Former champion Chris Moneymaker was eliminated from the World Series of Poker Main Event early in Day 4, ensuring all the remaining players made the money.

The annual migration cycle of poker players to Las Vegas for the WSOP is now over, and runners are now returning to the other poker hot spots for more action. The PLO event will end on Day 2 and the NLH edition will play down to a final table on September 1. The first two weeks of December may not have enough players for two giant festivals at the same time, but there’s still plenty of interest to go around if they all learn to share. However, since I play mainly high-stakes tournaments in the US, most of the players I’m familiar with are also high-stakes regulars. The tables are livelier; they’re more willing to chase draws and take gambles, and their fundamentals are still a bit weaker compared to US players. The biggest difference between tournaments in Asia and those in the US is that Asian players tend to play more aggressively.

After the incredible accomplishment of winning his fourth Poker Players Championship title, a tournament regarded by many as the hardest to win, Michael Mizrachi would go on to win the WSOP Main Event as well. Although she finished in 5th place, Enright solidified herself in WSOP history, and has added three WSOP bracelets to her list of accolades. The final hand from the 1986 WSOP Main Event, in which Chan defeated Erik Seidel to win the title, was included in the film. The most prized bracelet of them all, the WSOP Main Event bracelet stands above all others in size and value.

When people remember the boom-era WSOP, they tend to focus on famous players and televised hands. Black Friday didn’t help, as the affiliate model in the US just can’t survive promoting solely regulated online poker, and there isn’t money to have competing updates teams at the WSOP anymore. So, I liked in my interviews to try and bring players opportunities to express themselves without worrying if it was going to give away crucial information about how they thought about the game.

The meat of my career was live updates, so I hold a soft spot for those because that remains the best way to really embrace the game itself and break down a hand. Even after being on camera in various capacities for years, when I worked as the WPT Live Update Hostess in Season X, the larger poker community still pushed back. Thankfully, Wicked Chops Poker created this position for me on their weekly poker show where I popped in and gave them the major headlines from the industry for five minutes. As a tournament reporter, I was so behind the scenes and so low on the ladder that I did not feel that pressure. A lot of people would say poker was pretty nasty with misogyny during that period.

Just over half an hour was played when he turned kings full only to run into the flopped quads queens of Hisashi Yamanouchi. Gold was one of the most notable casualties today, along with Phil Ivey. Once the chips were bagged up, the tournament info screens showed a total of 4,997 entries for Day 1d of the 2025 WSOP Main Event to bring the overall tally to 8,694. All tournament areas at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas were filled to the brim. The largest first-place prize was $12,100,000, won by Daniel Weinman for winning the 2024 WSOP Main event.