WSOP 2026: Main Event Day 3 Drama as Mizrachi Makes Hay But Hellmuth Crashes Out
Hosting poker’s biggest yearly event for nearly two decades, The Rio in Las Vegas would host its final summer WSOP in 2021. A successful online player who got his start at only 15 years old, Cada made his first trip to the WSOP in 2009 and left Las Vegas as the youngest world champion in poker history. Just when it seemed Johnny Chan would win his third WSOP Main Event in a row, a 24 year-old Phil Hellmuth would deny Chan the three-peat as he became the youngest poker player at the time to win poker’s greatest title.
Mueller, like Gagliano, had some high points over the course of the first day of 2026 WSOP main event final table action. With the $500,000 Feng made for outlasting two players on day 9 of this tournament, and the potential of a lot more to come, it seems to have been a good investment. The 27-year-old poker player based out of Houston went from the second-shortest stack to start the final table to a clear second place position by the end of the session.
There’s 2019 champion Hossein Ensan (29,700,000), who is just one day away from another Main Event final table as he chases history. It’s starting to feel real for the players still standing in the 2026 World Series of Poker Main Event. Liu called to the 6♠ turn, which both players checked. Similar to the previous three flights, there were several casualties in the first level, and the unfortunate honor of the first player being eliminated belonged to Kacper Pyzara this time. More than $83.5 million in prize money has already been generated for the world’s largest live poker tournament of the year in Sin City.
ESPN coverage of the 2026 WSOP main event is set to start with day 1a of the tournament, on Thursday, July 2, and run through the entirety of the tournament. The first official day of WSOP tournament action also includes a $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event, which kicks off at 2 p.m. Until ESPN enters the picture later in the summer, final tables and live streams will air in-house on WSOP’s digital platforms, primarily on YouTube, starting on May 29. Once the final nine players are set, chip bags come out, and players are sent on their way for an extended break. While most WSOP events last three days and several take a full week to complete, this turbo tournament was finished in a pokernewsdaily.com single session. He is just the ninth player to ever surpass the $60-million mark, and is now ranked ninth on poker’s all-time money list.
All other WSOP bracelet events will be live-streamed for free on the official WSOP YouTube channel. Thousands of poker players from all over the world have already made the trip to Las Vegas, helping kick off what is set to be one of the most pivotal WSOPs in recent years. During the 20-day hiatus, ESPN will air specially curated prime-time episodes to build momentum and introduce the final table competitors to a global audience. In a strategic return to a “cliffhanger” television format, once the tournament reaches the final table on July 13, play will be paused. There are 100 live bracelet events scheduled for the 2025 WSOP. Today, CardPlayer.com is the best poker and gambling information portal for free poker and casino content, offering online poker site and casino reviews and exclusive online gambling bonus deals.
\”I caught some cards and I won some big pots. It seemed every time the pot got really big, especially three-handed, I had the best hand. That was helpful.” “It feels like every time I get into the situation, I just can’t. “Down here in Florida, I don’t feel like I’ve ever done as well as I should have,” McKeehen told SHRPO live reporter BJ Nemeth.
The three-night live Final Table will be broadcast from Aug. 3-5 on ESPN and ESPN2. There’s now just one battle left, and it will continue until an outright champion is crowned, which could take days. The $10,000 Main Event is the most prestigious, but there are other tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $300 to $250,000
The richest, most prestigious and longest-running poker series returns to the Las Vegas Strip in 2025. After just over eight hours of play, with the field three eliminations away from the money, it was time for what would be a lengthy two-and-a-half-hour session of hand-for-hand play to burst the bubble. The 2026 APT Incheon Main Event has become the largest international poker tournament ever held in the city, and the second-largest APT Main Event ever held in South Korea. Regardless of the WPT’s game plan, Las Vegas will be here, and we will be playing poker either way. Three different $26,000 NLH events will scatter themselves in between to make up a complete Super High Roller Series.
Kristen Foxen Wins $25K High Roller for Sixth World Series of Poker Bracelet
Watch fun and exciting live poker streams from Global Poker. Watch poker live streams on PokerStars, the world’s premier poker destination. Follow along with the APT live stream all day long! Phil Hellmuth has the most bracelets of all-time, having won 17 between 1989 and 2024.
But when he said he won the cash in a poker tournament at Aria, they still wouldn’t take the money. However, Nevada regulators began levying heavy fines on Las Vegas casinos after they allowed several illegal bookmakers to play at their properties. Then she obtained a verified check from another casino, and the WSOP allowed her to play. A fixture in the high-stakes poker ecosystem was removed from a live-streamed cash game at the World Series of Poker. Based in the United Kingdom, Will started working for PokerNews as a freelance live reporter in 2015 and joined the full-time staff in 2019. For the first time in over a week, just a single winner will be crowned on Wednesday as the $10,000 Razz Championship crowns its winner.
The powers that be behind the WSOP brought some heavy hitters on board to round out the broadcast team, including long-time PokerStars and European Poker Tour broadcaster Joe Stapleton. Beginning today, May 26, the action carries on every day through July 15. Tuesday afternoon marks the beginning of the 2026 World Series of Poker.
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.
Just 1,389 players remained at the close of Day 3, meaning that the biggest poker tournament of the year sits seven places from the money as everyone left bids to make profit and then push on towards the $10,000,000 top prize. Five bracelet events come in under $1,000, while 54 tournaments fall between $1,000 and $5,000, forming the core of the summer grind. On behalf of the entire WSOP staff, best of luck to every poker player competing throughout the series, whether you fire one bullet in the $300 No-Limit Hold’em Gladiators of Poker, the $100,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller, or every event in between. Check out our Poker Player of the Year race, as well as years of data of poker player results and casino poker tournament pay-outs.
Fan favorites, including the Mystery Millions, Millionaire Maker, and the Senior’s Championship, are set to return to the schedule along with some new, exciting tournament formats. Defending champion Junjie He won’t be defending his crown after starting the day with 88,500 and hitting the rail before night’s end. Two of the biggest names in the field to start Wednesday saw their days end surprisingly quickly. 2023 APT Taipei Main Event champion Punnat Punsri will join the Day 3 field from the Natural8 ‘Onlive’ flight with 492,000. Other notables moving on include Bin Duan, whose career-best cash of $351,000 came here in South Korea in a 2025 Triton event. Haohui Ma had an eventful couple of levels, starting with a dramatic double-up when he got his pocket kings in against Tomoya Kojima’s aces and drilled a two-outer on the river.
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♥.
A year before that, women’s all-time money leader Kristen Foxen placed 13th in the largest main event ever held. Normally, if I was playing eight days in a row of cash game no-limit hold’em, I would be ready to off myself. I’ve made two day fives in the main event, but this is the most by far. I was playing no-limit every day, and then I got into mixed games. Rami Hammoud (41,500,000), Lucas Jumalon (40,800,000), and Evagoras Evagorou (38,200,000) closed strong on day 8 to bolster their hopes of a final table run.
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.
Players can now access all tournament details via the WSOP+ app, which has already been updated with the full schedule. To bring WSOP action to a wider international audience for free, a daily stream will be broadcast live on the official WSOP YouTube channel from May 26 through to the start of the Main Event. After a number of hands were played and small pots exchanged, a flopped ace-nine two pair held by Wasnock would meet its demise after Mizrachi turned a flush with a suited ten-three.
The series spanned everything from the $2,500 Circuit Championship Mystery Bounty and the Super Colossus to a run of Triton-branded high rollers Other winners during the series included Alex Foxen, Nick Schulman, Stephen Chidwick and PokerStars ambassador Alejandro Lococo. WSOP Paradise returned bigger than before in 2024 with a $500,000 buy-in event in partnership with Triton and a $50 million guaranteed Super Main Event. “It’s going to be an absolutely amazing experience, the best of poker at one of the world’s most luxurious resorts.”
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.
Starting May 26, the streams will bring live action from a revamped TV set featuring some of poker’s most familiar voices. WSOP Circuit tournaments usually enjoy large crowds, but the ones in Las Vegas this summer could break attendance records with so many grinders being in Sin City for the 2026 WSOP. How do you top perhaps the greatest summer in poker history? In any other year, Michael Mizrachi winning the PPC for an unprecedented fourth time might have been the story of the summer, but you might remember “The Grinder” went and added something else to his record as well. Last year, the Millionaire Maker was one of the most talked-about stories of the series, controversial but compelling, it remains a standout event that always draws a massive crowd. The format, which ran from 2008 to 2016, featured a four-month gap between the Main Event final table being set and the next world champion being crowned.
Shaun Deeb is the reigning WSOP Player of the Year, having cashed in 18 live events, six online bracelet events, and reached five final tables in 2025. From the smallest fields to the largest, the $1,500 Monster Stack and $500 Colossus, will once again draw enormous crowds, as players of all levels embark on their annual poker pilgrimage to play two of the summer’s most popular events. With a $5,000 pricetag, the event is sure to draw some of poker’s best full-time professional players who look to secure a big score and add a shiny, new WSOP gold bracelet to their wrist. Elsewhere at the SHRPO series, statistical anomalies were on tap as three different players won four events in the series. The most prestigious mixed-game poker tournament of the year is down to its final six contenders, and the remaining half dozen players include some of the most decorated names in the game.
While Mueller’s been a mixed game player for the bulk of his professional poker career, he’s afforded himself incredibly well thus far in the 2026 WSOP main event. Two other multi-time bracelet winners also advanced to day 8 of the 2026 WSOP main event. Speaking of Ensan, the 2019 WSOP main event champion is one day away from a return to the final table in 2026. The final 174 players will return for day 6 at noon on Saturday, July 11, with blinds of 30,000-60,000 and a 60,000 big blind ante for level 25. Among the final 174 players, 24 have already won at least one WSOP bracelet. With the WSOP Main Event deep in the middle of its run and no championships events concluding until the start of the weekend, the PokerGO Tour Leaderboard remains as it was yesterday, with Sean Winter leading from the Finnish player Eelis Parssinen.
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More famous players added their names to WSOP history, as Dan Harrington, Huck Seed and Scotty Nguyen all won Main Events. The full schedule released in February, showing 100 bracelet events with buy-ins ranging from $300 to $250,000. From your first Circuit event to a final table in Las Vegas, WSOP is still where you go to prove something. It’s the only platform in the US where you can win a poker tournament for official WSOP gold bracelets without leaving home!
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 way I would describe it is that preflop, when you’re playing no-limit hold’em, you can make some really big mistakes.
- Yosuke Miki’s flush draw turned into a rivered straight to best the flopped set of tens of Sergio Martinez Gonzalez, ending the Spaniard’s run in seventh place ($312,233).
- For the second time in his career, Mizrachi made the final table of the WSOP main event.
The 2024 World Series of Poker (WSOP) is scheduled to take place from Tuesday, May 28 through Wednesday, July 17 at the Horseshoe and Paris Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. With MyPlayers, you can track your favorite pros, friends, or family members across every reported event. Other sites may post summaries, but only PokerNews has the full hand histories, photos, and chip counts reported live from the floor. PokerNews is the official source for official WSOP live reporting coverage. Expect on-the-fly video content, and daily recaps to keep you up to speed even if you miss the live action.
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.
All love for the APT
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.
That’s why I’ll join APT events as often as my schedule allows. What I like most about APT is their big lion trophies, especially the golden-colored lion trophy for their main event, which is the trophy I want to win the most right now. With his vibrant, playful personality both on and off the tables, he’s a star in demand by fans here as well, taking time away from the tables to chat and pose for pictures. Getting to share some of the stories from a tournament day that weren’t the headlines but were memorable nonetheless was a very special opportunity. You saw poker media evolve from blogs, written updates, and experimental podcasts into official livestreams, social video, and organization-owned content.
Sign up for MyStack today and control your own narrative from the felt. PokerNews is proud to announce its return as the official live reporting partner of the 2025 World Series of Poker (WSOP). The top nine finishers are all set to earn at least seven-figure paydays, with the runner-up taking home $6,000,000. Prior to her repeat victories, Shiina finished second in the Ladies Event in 2023, being just one spot shy of winning the event three years in a row.
