Daily Updates from the 2023 WSOP – June 17

Yuan Li won the only bracelet awarded on Saturday giving China its second bracelet so far this series. Meanwhile, the Monster Stack game finished its opening days with more than 8,300 entries while Benny Glaser is looking for his fifth bracelet in the Triple Draw Championship. The very first Big O game got underway with almost 1,500 entries, the Super High Roller is now in the money and the iconic $50k Poker Players Championship, regarded by many as the pinnacle of poker achievement because of the requirement to master so many games, gets going on Sunday at 2 pm.

Event #37: $2,000 No-Limit Holdem

China has now become the third nation to earn multiple bracelets at this WSOP after Yuan Li bagged the Asian nation’s second bracelet in Event #37 Saturday evening. He had to navigate a field of almost 2,000 runners (1.962) to get his piece of the $3,492,360 prize pool.

Li returned to Day 3 play with the chip lead, and he never relinquished that on the final day. Interestingly, once the game got heads up, there was always going to be a nation adding to an existing bracelet count. Li faced off against Canada’s Jonathan Camara during two-handed play, and with Canada bagging its first bracelet in Event #8 and its second in Event #21, no matter who took down the heads up, their home country would be a multiple bracelet winner, though had Camara taken it down it would have bumped Canada’s tally to three.

This was Li’s first WSOP bracelet and his third live win in general. This win puts him over $2 million in lifetime earnings now as this was his second-best score on the live felt after about $850k for winning a super high roller game at the 2016 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP), Macau.

Event #38: $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship

With field sizes as big as they’ve been this year, extra days are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Once again, the $10k Triple Draw Championship wasn’t able to finish in its allotted three days of play, so the remaining two players will return on Sunday to finish out the heads-up phase of this Championship.

The pole position on the impromptu Day 4 is held by Glaser with 4.94 million in chips. Glaser is looking for his fifth career bracelet in this one and Triple Draw was his first bracelet back in 2015. Since then he added a razz bracelet plus two from split pot Omaha Hi-Lo, with both his O8 bracelets coming in 2016. Glaser crushes on more than just the live felt, however, as he recently became the top dog on PokerStars COOP leaderboard with his 18th title between the Spring and World Championship events, more than any other player in history. Glaser will face down Sweden’s Oscar Johansson in the final day of play, and this will be something of a David vs Goliath battle as Johannsson looks to be a relative newcomer on the live poker scene with just 14 results listed on Hendon Mob for lifetime earnings of just over $100k compared to Glaser with about $6.7 million.

Glaser didn’t have an easy field at the final table either. Once the final seven were decided, Glaser was looking across at players like Sampo Ryynanen (4th, $101,709), David “Bakes” Baker (6th, $56,528), and Joao Vieira (7th, $42,965). The final day of action in this big Championship begins at 2 pm local time, and one of the two remaining players will be wearing a bracelet at the end.

Event #39: $1,500 MONSTER STACK No-Limit Hold’em Day 1b

The starting flights for the MONSTER STACK are now complete, and the field was as monstrous as the stack for this one. In the end, 8,318 entries were recorded on one of the two starting days for a prize pool of more than $11 million. The prizes for the event haven’t been worked out just yet, but with over 8,000 entries, something like 1,200 players should get paid. There will be 2,715 players returning for Day 2 action, and the bubble is expected to burst on Day 2.

Turkey’s Tinay Aksoy bagged the biggest stack of either starting day at the end of Day 1b with almost 800k. There were two other players with 700k or more, plus another two with 600k or more. Among the notables to bag a Day 2 stack from this final flight were Kathy Liebert (575k), Frederic Normand (521k), Upeshka De Silva (454k), Jeff Madsen (452k), and Veronica Brill (62k).

Day 2 is an early start for returning players with play getting underway at 10 am and they are expected to play well into the money during today’s action.

Event #40: $250,000 Super High Roller No-Limit Hold’em

There were 69 entries in the Super High Roller before registration shut down at the start of Saturday’s Day 2. That put $17,181,000 into the middle to play for to be split 11 ways at the end of the game. The min-cash for this one will be $411,940 while the winner will take home the biggest prize to date in this year’s series at $5,293,556.

There are just nine players remaining in the game after the second day of play, and that means Ben Heath and Alfred Decarolis have already pocketed min-cashes from this game, but the top nine spots are still up for grabs. Chance Kornuth leads the star-studded field into what should be the final day of play with 22.45 million, more than 4 million ahead of the second-place stack of Martin Kabrhel. Artur Martirosian also bagged in the 18 million range for third place, while Alex Kulev, Dan Smith, and David Peters are just a few of the crushers left in action.

Final Nine Stacks in $250,000 Super High Roller

Seat	Player	Country	Chips
1	Steven Veneziano	United States	6.775 M
2	Chris Brewer	United States	8.525 M
3	Martin Kabrhel	Czech Republic	18.4 M
4	Brandon Steven	United States	3.225 M
5	Chance Kornuth	United States	22.45 M
6	Artur Martirosian	Russia	18.225 M
7	Dan Smith	United States	7.8 M
8	Alex Kulev	Bulgaria	12.6M
9	David Peters	United States	4.925 M

The biggest buy-in game of the whole series should finish on Sunday with the action kicking off at 2 pm and playing until they crown a champion. PokerGO will be streaming all the endgame action from this nosebleed game starting at 6 pm.

Event #41: $1,500 Big O

2023 is a year of firsts at the WSOP. After organizers put on the first-ever Badugi bracelet game earlier in the series, another new game was added to the schedule in the form of Big O, a five-card split-pot Omaha game played with pot limits. While it is always hard to judge the size of a new format, there were almost 1,500 entries for this one putting the prizes at just under $2 million.

A total of 219 players will be sharing in the money by the end of the game, with the winner slated to pocket $315,203 while the earliest cashers will make $2,407. Xu Zhu leads the counts after the first day with 570k and there are two other players with 500k+ stacks at the end of the day.

The opening day played to the bubble and then bagged up after Vinnie McCambridge was the last player eliminated before the money. That means all 219 returning players are guaranteed a payday of some form but likely no one will be satisfied with the minimum cash. Among the players returning in the money are Ari Engel with a top-ten stack, Mike Gorodinsky, Bruno Fitoussi, Adam Owen, Nathan Gamble, Yuval Bronshtein, and Robert Williamson III.

National Standings

There are now three nations with more than one bracelet in this series. It’s hardly a surprise that the host nation USA leads the way with the vast majority of wins so far, but both Canada and China have stepped up with two wins each.

Country	Bracelets	1st Place Prizes
USA	25	$10,146,282
Canada	2	$775,011
China	2	$927,365
Brazil	1	$465,501
Bulgaria	1	$435,924
Germany	1	$1,546,024
Japan	1	$221,124
Netherlands	1	$2,576,729
Portugal	1	$144,678
Switzerland	1	$1,215,864
Ukraine	1	$164,835

Upcoming Events on June 18

Event #42: $800 8-Handed No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack

• Start: 10 am
• Late Entry: 12 Levels
• Start Stack: 40,000
• Reentries: 1

Event #43: $50,000 Poker Players Championship

• Start: 2 pm
• Late Entry: 9 Levels
• Start Stack: 300,000
• Reentries: 0

Online Event #6: $500 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo

• Start: 3:30 pm