Daily Updates from the 2023 WSOP – July 7

The biggest Main Event ever got a bit bigger on Day 2abc with entries still open for two levels on Day 2. They got nearly 200 extra entries on the first Day 2, pushing the total field over 9,500 now with a few hours on Saturday’s Day 2d still left to enter. Christopher Brammer parlayed his second-place Day 1c stack into the lead after Day 2abc while defending champ Espen Jorstad hit the rail in a bit of a cooler. Julio Belluscio, Nick Marchington, and Finnish crusher Patrik Antonius all bagged top-ten stacks in 2abc, and there are several Main Event champs still in the field including the winner of the previous biggest Main, Jamie Gold. Meanwhile, other action started to get underway again as the crush from the Main Event is beginning to die down, with Lucky 7’s and the PLO Bounty game starting on Friday. Lucky 7’s plays two more starting days this weekend, while the PLO Bounty is already in the money.

Event #76: $10,000 MAIN EVENT No-Limit Hold’em World Championship – Flight 2abc

The Main Event is now into Day 2 territory with the first of two Day 2s playing out on Friday. They got a few more entries in the first couple of levels of the day, bringing the total field up to more than 9,500 now with the entries finally closing on the biggest Main Event field ever at the end of Level 7 during Saturday’s Day 2d.

Organizers are now looking at the possibility of more than 10k entries for this one, though to be fair, 500 extra entries on the final day seems optimistic even given the big numbers so far. That said, no doubt there are players in Canada and the US, or elsewhere even, who have seen the huge numbers watching from afar and booked last-minute flights to Vegas to get a piece of the record pie, so Day 2d could see a run on entries in the early hours of the day.

Christopher Brammer was second in chips to start the day which saw about 3,900 players coming back, bagging the chip lead at the end of Day 2abc. He was just a hair behind the Day 1a leading stack of Israel’s Yehuda Dayan to start Day 2abc, but Brammer had the better Day 2. Dayan is still alive but was basically treading water for the day, finishing a bit lower than he started the day while Brammer shot up the counts to bag 879k at the end of the day.

Among the other players with big bags at the end of the first Day 2 were Julio Belluscio, Nick Marchington, and Finnish crusher Patrik Antonius who bagged 2nd, 5th, and 9th place stacks respectively. Ronnie Bardah and Shota Nakanishi are among the other players to bag half a million or more after Day 2abc. Doug Polk, who bagged the 4th biggest stack on Day 1a, didn’t quite manage the half-mil but bagged a respectable 433k to end the day.

Place	Player	Home	Chips
1	Christopher Brammer	United Kingdom	879k
2	Julio Belluscio	Argentina	825.5k
3	Beqir Salihu	United States	801k
4	John Sofillas	United States	780k
5	Nick Marchington	United Kingdom	716k
6	Heitor Saraiva	United States	665.5k
7	Sachin Joshi	United Kingdom	635.5k
8	Andrew Hulme	United Kingdom	610k
9	Patrik Antonius	Finland	584.5k
10	Nikita Luther	India	572.5k

No Back-to-Back This Year

Day 2 of the Main Event is when dreams start to form for a few players as they build their stack toward the later days of the biggest game in poker, but for a lot more people, Day 2 is where the Main Event dream dies, and defending champ Espen Jorstad was one such player on Friday’s Day 2abc. His loss will be softened somewhat by the glow that is no doubt still present from last year, but he was surely hoping for a deeper run this year. At least Jorstad can console himself with the fact that he went out on a cooler when the money went in on the flop after he flopped a set of sixes but Julian Aguirre flopped a straight. Jorstad couldn’t find a boat by the river and drowned his back-to-back chance.

A few other players who were in action on Day 2 but failed to advance included Cedrric Trevino, Jack Sinclair, Garett Maybery, Felipe Ketzer, Martin Finger, Paulina Loeliger, and recent Canada Day bracelet winner David Guay. Daniel Negreanu had a short stack to start the day and wasn’t able to spin it up and joining him on the Day 2 rail were players like Adrian Mateos, Alex Keating, Jamie Kerstetter, Jeremy Ausmus, and 2004 Main Event champion Greg Raymer. In total, there were 1,880 bags recorded at the end of the night from about 3,900 players who started the day.

Main Event Winners Advance

While the defending champion is already on the rail in this record-breaking Main Event, there are still a bunch of other players who have a shot at repeating their previous Main Event wins. Not least among them is Jamie Gold, winner of the 2006 Main Event, which was the previous record holder for biggest live game ever. Gold bagged up 248k for Day 3 while a few other past winners who still have chips include Damian Salas, Joe McKeehen, Martin Jacobson, Ryan Riess, Joe Cada, and Tom McEvoy, though McEvoy is starting the day with just 20k. One former champion who will be looking for his third title starting on Day 3 is OG legend Johnny Chan.

Chan famously won two straight in the late 80s before losing heads up in his attempt at three to the then-young upstart Phil Hellmuth in 1989. Chan went on to win a total of 10 bracelets so far, and he was already sniffing at #11 earlier in the series with a run to the final two tables of the Big O game. Chan is looking hot this year, and winning his third Main Event title nearly 4 decades after his second would be the story of the decade for sure.

For his part, the man who stopped Chan’s run for three back in the 80s has famously gone on to be the winningest player in WSOP history with an astonishing 17 bracelets, winning at least two bracelets in each of the last four decades after his first in ’89. While he only has one Vegas Main title on his resume, the Poker Brat is the only player in history to win both the Vegas and the International versions of the Main, and while he wasn’t in action on Day 2abc, he will be for Day 2d and will join the rest of the field for Day 3 if he manages to make it through.

There are still a few hours left for players to get into the biggest live poker tournament ever. While there have been games with bigger fields – in fact, this series has seen a field of more than 23,000 and others between 10k and 20k entries. However, the biggest ever prize pool for a live poker game was the 2006 Main Event at just over $80 million, and with the prize pool in this one now over $90 million, it is already the richest pot ever for live tournament poker.

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

With the Main Event into Day 2 action, the final few events in this series are starting to run once again with Lucky 7’s among the first to start up again. The opening flight for this low-cost bracelet saw 1,470 entries play down into the Day 1a money with just 64 players left with bags for Monday’s Day 2.

Thomas Blanton is one of two players to bag more than 2 million chips, but the other double millionaire remains anonymous as they are reported as “Did Not Report”. Kevin Song, Max Steinberg, and Christian Pham are among the bracelet winners still in the action after Day 1a. There are still two more shots for players to bag a Day 2 stack, and players who busted 1a, either in the money or not, are eligible to try again on later starting flights. Day 1a qualifiers return to the felt Monday for Day 2, while Day 1b kicks off at 10 am on Saturday.

Event #78: $1,500 BOUNTY Pot-Limit Omaha

The other game to kick off on Friday was Event #78: $1,500 BOUNTY Pot-Limit Omaha. There were 1,214 entries by the time registration shut down and just 140 players left with chips at the end of it all. There is a total of $1,620,690 to play for in this one, with 183 players sharing in the money and the earliest cashers already have money in their pockets.

Julian Segura was the min-casher for this one, pocketing $1,501 and he was joined at the cage by Roland Israelashvili, Daniel Tafur, Erik Seidel, Felipe Ramos, 2019 PoY winner Robert Campbell, Andy Black, and Kane Kalas before they bagged at the end of Day 1. Casey Wassell was one of three players with 600k or more as he bagged the lead with almost 700k. Among the other bags at the end of Day 1 were Dylan Smith, Scott Dulaney, David “ODB” Baker, Frédéric Normand, Daniel Negreanu, and Noah Schwartz.

Day 2 action for Event #78 kicks off at 2 pm on Saturday, and they’ll all be looking for chips to take down the $171,742 top prize.

Upcoming Events on July 8

Event #76: $10,000 MAIN EVENT No-Limit Hold’em World Championship – Day 2d

• Start: 12 noon
• Late Entry: 7 Levels
• Start Stack: 60,000
• Reentries: 0

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

• Start: 10 am
• Late Entry: 12 Levels
• Start Stack: 40,000
• Reentries: Unlimited

Online Event #15: No-Limit Hold’em Championship

• Start: 3:30 pm