Daily Updates from the 2023 WSOP – July 10

They are in the money of the biggest Main Event in history after four days of play. Ryan Tosoc is one of three players with more than 5 million, but there are still more than 400 players in the mix looking to take the biggest ME prize record away from Jamie Gold. There are another five levels of play on the schedule for today, and as always there is wall-to-wall coverage of Day 5 Main Event action on PokerGO today. Meanwhile, the Lucky 7’s game is down to the final five, Event #79 returns for Day 2 with players in the money, and the big HORSE game saw almost 100 entries on Day 1.

Event #76: $10,000 MAIN EVENT No-Limit Hold’em World Championship

The biggest Main Event and biggest live poker game ever is now in the money with just 441 players left alive. The players came back for Day 4 just eleven players off the money but it took a bit of time for the bubble to burst. There were almost two hours of play before Jeppe Bisgaard, Yueqi Wang, and Peter Nigh split the bottom two payouts as the bubble spots.

Ryan Tosoc bagged the chip lead after four days of play and is one of three players with 5 million or more in their bag with 20 levels in the books. Mitchell Halverson and Aditya Systla are the other 5 million plus players, while Scott Berko and Bradley Moskowitz round out the top five stacks with more than 4 million each. The rest of the top ten all have more than 3.7 million.

Tosoc already has one bracelet, won in 2018 in the $1,000 NLHE Championship online and he has close to $5 million in total wins according to Hendon Mob, with about $1 million of that coming on WSOP felt. He already has a couple of seven-figure scores in the mid-2010s and will be looking to add a third in a few days when the biggest Main Event ever plays down to a final table with 8 of 9 players set to pocket $1 million or more.

Top Ten Stacks After Four Days of Play in the 2023 Main Event

Place	Player	Home	Chips	Big Blinds
1	Ryan Tosoc	United States	5.12m	205
2	Mitchell Halverson	United States	5.1m	204
3	Aditya Systla	India	5.075m	203
4	Scott Berko	United Kingdom	4.7m	188
5	Bradley Moskowitz	United States	4.145m	166
6	Juan Maceiras Lapido	Spain	3.985m	159
7	Jon Cohen	United States	3.815m	153
8	Gabi Livshitz	Israel	3.8m	152
9	John Racener	United States	3.71m	148
10	Quan Zhou	China	3.705m	148

Two Hour Bubble

Day 4 action came back with players just eleven spots away from the $15k min-cash and, as expected, the early action was pretty fierce. The small stacks weren’t scared to get their chips in, but for the first hour and a half or so, all that happened were short stack doubles. Nearly two hours into the hand-for-hand portion of the game, the bubble finally burst with three different players busting on the same hand. That meant Jeppe Bisgaard, Yueqi Wang, and Peter Nigh would split the bottom two prizes, worth $30k total, between them for $10k a piece, and then play a flip to see who would pocket the 2024 Main Event seat, promised to the bubble player in this year’s event. Bisgard won the flip and will be playing the 2024 Main for free.

Once the bubble burst it was a rush to the payout desk, including a few players who just barely slid into the money. One player, Xiangchen Gao from China, was very short and expected to be forced all-in from the big blind shortly after the day began. In what may be one of the most unusual moves of any game, Gao passed out a letter to tablemates to start the day pleading for a walk in his first big blind, citing his desire to use the prize money for a honeymoon with his girlfriend. Gao did manage to survive the bubble and pocket a $15k min-cash in 1,350th place, though he was forced to play his small stack during the 100-odd minutes of bubble play.

Another great story from Day 4 came courtesy of Cody Daniels. The terminally ill player collapsed on their way back from a break during Day 3 play, but after some time with WSOP medical staff they were cleared to return to play and finished out Day 3 to bag a stack on the bubble of this massive game. While they were short coming into Day 4, they weren’t among the shortest and managed to survive through the bubble and ladder up to a $30k cash in 635th place later in the day. Once the bubble burst, Daniels got quite emotional at the table and was interviewed by PokerGO. They doubled up post-bubble before going on to the 635th place finish and getting a round of applause from the table as they headed to the payout desk.

Among the big names to fall on Day 4 with money in hand were Steven Wang, who cashed from just a single 1k chip on the bubble, as well as Allen Kessler, 2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada, Joshua Faris, Farah Galfond, and “Boston” Rob Mariano. 2006 Champ Jamie Gold was looking to win another $12 million score, but he had to settle for $17.5k for 1,082nd this year. Johnny Chan and Scott Blumstein were among the other former ME winners who busted on Day 4 while Nicholas “Dirty Diaper” Rigby, Chance Kornuth (who started the day in the lead), Christian Harder, Nick Guagenti, Nate Silver, Jerry “Pei” Li, Roman Hrabec, John Duthie, and Kyle Cartwright were among the players to bag top-100 stacks on Day 4.

Day 5 action kicks off at noon on Tuesday, and there are another five levels of play on the schedule.

Event #77: $777 Lucky 7’s No-Limit Hold’em

Anthony Scarborough is leading the final five players in the Lucky 7’s game with an astonishing 140 million in his bag. That is essentially double the second-place stack of Julien Montois with 70.7 million. Shawn Daniels is the next biggest with just shy of 50 million while Istvan Briski and Charles La Boissonniere will be playing shorter stacks on the final day.

Thomas Blanton, Day 1a chip leader, was among the players to cash out on Day 2, and joining him at the payout desk were players like Jerry Yang, Renan Bruschi, Travis Macmillan, Weston Pring, and Alex Livingston. The final day of action for the Lucky 7’s game goes at 1 pm with the final five players out of 7,300 runners competing for the biggest share ($777,777) of the $4,991,448 prize pool.

Event #79: $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em

Seth Davies is the leader after the opening day of play in Event #79. He was one of two players with more than a million in his bag with Spain’s Ramon Fernandez bagging the other seven-figure stack after Day 1. There are 310 players left in the game from the starting field of 2,068 and they bagged up for Day 1 just after the money bubble burst. Brady Osterman was the min-cash spot late on Day 1 in 311th place, but the rest of the payouts are yet to come on Day 2 and 3 with all players eyeing the $682,436 top prize.

Among the other players returning with chips for Day 2 looking for a piece of the $4,601,300 prize pool are Galen Hall, Alex Greenblatt, Renan Bruschi, Levi Berger, Marc Macdonnell, Matt Wilkins, Thomas Taylor, Ben Keeline, and Shawn Buchanan while some of the players who failed to find a bag in this one included Scotty Nguyen, Blair Hinkle, Erick Lindgren, Jonathan Little, Sergio Agüero, rapper Hoodie Allen, Ryan Depaulo, and PokerStars Ambassador Benjamin Spragg.

The final 310 players are back at the felt at 10 am on Tuesday with ten levels on the schedule for Day 2.

Event #80: $25,000 High Roller H.O.R.S.E.

Josh Arieh is riding the Clydesdale after the opening day of play in the $25k HORSE with a leading stack of 621.5k. He is the only player with more than 600k, but three others, including Nacho Barbero, bagged up 500k or more. The remaining players in the star-studded top ten list all have between 400k and 500k and basically reads like a who’s-who of poker.

Place	Player	Home	Stack
1	Josh Arieh	United States	621.5k
2	Motoyoshi Okamura	Japan	565k
3	Yehuda Buchalter	United States	511k
4	Nacho Barbero	Argentina	504k
5	Hal Rotholz	United States	478k
6	Matt Glantz	United States	463k
7	Andres Korn	United States	461k
8	Max Hoffman	United States	451k
9	Michael Noori	United States	445k
10	Michael Moncek	United States	415k

There were 98 entries on Day 1 of the $25k HORSE game but the field is not yet set as entries for this game are open until the beginning of Day 2. At the moment, there is just over $2.3 million in the prize pool, but that will grow with the new entries at the beginning of the second day. Play kicks off at 1 pm on Tuesday, and the field will be set when cards go in the air today.

Upcoming Events on July 11

Event #76: $10,000 MAIN EVENT No-Limit Hold’em World Championship – Day 5

• Start: 12 noon
• Entries: 10,043
• Prizes: $93,399,900
• Remaining: 441
• Next Prize: $37,500

Event #81: $600 Ultra Stack – No-limit Hold’em – Flight A

• Start: 10 am
• Late Entry: 12 Levels
• Start Stack: 60,000
• Reentries: 2 per Flight

Event #82: $3,000 6-Handed Pot-Limit Omaha

• Start: 2 pm
• Late Entry: 8 Levels
• Start Stack: 40,000
• Reentries: 2

Online Event #17: $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em 6-Max Championship

• Start: 3:30 pm