WSOP WSOP 2026 UPDATES: TWO MORE WSOP BRACELETS FIND NEW HOMES
Many more will follow within the next two weeks as the eyes of the global poker community are once again firmly set on the grandest of spectacles. This time, the end for Aguero came in Level 5 when his king-nine suited couldn’t beat the pocket tens of Andrius Mazurkevicius. Belonging into the latter category is certainly football striker Sergio Aguero from Argentina, who has already competed in multiple WSOP tournaments. Last year’s runner-up Jordan Griff also participated on Day 1d but bowed out during the final level of the night, Pyzara certainly wasn’t the only one to suffer a horrendous beat, as Jared Bleznick saw his pocket aces cracked in a six-bet pot by Romain Locquet on the live-stream table when the Frenchman made quads nines. Hundreds of other dreams were crushed thereafter, with nearly ten percent of the field already on the rail by the time the dinner break kicked off at the end of Level 3.
“Goofy” Beats Mikita Badziakouski Heads-Up to Win the $10K Premiere Onyx High Roller Series for $1M
What did interviewing them face-to-face reveal that the public version of those players concealed? I can promise you, more often than not, the voice in the meetings speaking up for the players was Seth’s. No one ever said, \”well, you can’t interview players because you have to be hot to do that,\” but no one was really clamoring for me to interview players on camera. How did that affect the opportunities you received, the way players treated you, and how hard you had to work before people assumed you knew what you were talking about?
Along the way, she helped turn live updates, podcasts, video, and streaming into something more than a scoreboard and and learned what gets lost when everybody is forced to consume poker the same way. The six-time bracelet winner got all in with a pair of tens facing eights and deuces on fifth street. The two-time bracelet winner has cashed twice, though, placing 13th and 14th in 2023 and 2024, respectively. The chip leader is eight-time bracelet winner Benny Glaser, who added three wins to his tally in 2025.
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.
His team is currently leading the 25K Fantasy with 871 points, largely thanks to Josh Arieh’s stellar summer and recent runner-up finish in the PPC. That happened in 2024, when he won the most prestigious title of his lengthy career in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship for $1.1 million, but still finished the summer in the red. And he can have a good summer even if he loses. “In my mind state, the idea of playing until 1 or 2 in the morning, its five o clock right now, the chances that I’m going to put in a good effort are very low,” he explained from his car. And while he is constantly firing and looking to “optimize” $25k Fantasy points, Negreanu isn’t afraid to take an evening off to rest or spend time at home. He failed to cash the biggest buy-in of the summer, the $250,000 Super High Roller, and it was the same story in the $100,000 High Roller.
Ensan bagged a healthy 3,450,000 at the end of day 5, and he feels that his 2019 run should prove incredibly valuable as he continues to run deeper. The German pro, who is also an European Poker Tour champion, would love to add a second career $10 million payday to his ledger. I’ve been willing to play big pots, and most people aren’t.”
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.
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.
Seth Palansky in particular, got a lot of unwarranted hate back in the day. Working directly for the WSOP did give me a great appreciation for the importance of logistics which were often lost on the larger poker community. When you later worked on the official WSOP side, how did your understanding of the event change?
The following year, the tournament saw its first buy-in of $5,000 and this was increased to $10,000 in 1972. The first World Series took place in 1970 and featured no tournaments at all. Each year, a dedicated team of live reporters, editors, presenters, videographers and photographers help make PokerNews the place to be when it comes to staying up-to-date on the World Series. PokerNews has attended every World Series of Poker since 2007, and is proud to serve as the official live coverage partner of the WSOP, including Main Event coverage.
CoinPoker is among the platforms targeted as a “competing online poker operator” with restrictions in play. However, the new rules seem to target the creation of any kind of content created within the boundaries of the WSOP, putting a number of streamers and sponsored players in a tough spot. In previous years, the restrictions were almost exclusively tied to final tables, live streams and broadcasts. Rule 40 states that any player who accepts any payment or prize from a third party based on the outcome or results of a WSOP event is subject to a forfeit of all WSOP prize money. Both players were subsequently banned from Caesars properties.
WSOP Circuit – Hard Rock Tulsa
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. These were the days when multiple outlets still showed up to report on these things so I got a tiny glimpse of how media row worked. I had a glimpse of what tournaments looked like because the WSOP Circuit had come through Caesars Southern Indiana. Along the way, she found a place for herself in an industry that often had a very narrow idea of what a woman in poker media was supposed to look like and do. Jessica Welman arrived at the WSOP pretending a summer in Las Vegas counted as academic research.
Each sheet outlines the tournament format, including starting stacks, level lengths, blind structures, break times, and registration details. The Main Event begins on July 2, with four starting flights, and concludes with the final table on July 15–16. Download it now for free, print it off and study at your leisure ahead of what will be another memorable instalment of the world’s biggest poker series. The prestigious $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event is scheduled to begin on July 2, culminating with the final table on July 15-16. The official schedule for the 2025 World Series of Poker was released in February 2025 and anticipation is already building for another thrilling summer of poker action in Las Vegas.
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.
- Seven-time bracelet winner Josh Arieh and three-time bracelet winner Paul Volpe are both at their third PPC final tables.
- Poker players during that era had television identities, online personas, forum reputations, and private selves that could be very different from one another.
- Online and in-person registration for all World Series events will open in the weeks prior to the first event.
- Both players were subsequently banned from Caesars properties.
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.
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.
About World Series of PokerThe 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. To qualify online for WSOP 2026, please visit GGPoker.com to find out more about WSOP Express, or wsoponline.com if located in the United States. New for 2026, WSOP will award $1M in total to POY competitors, with the player who finishes first receiving a $100,000 WSOP Paradise 2026 package. As always, the centerpiece of the summer is the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Championship, better known as the ‘Main Event’, which begins on Thursday, July 2. Returning to the Horseshoe Las Vegas and Paris Las Vegas on the iconic Las Vegas Strip, the 2026 WSOP promises a summer of unparalleled action, where new legends will be made and 100 gold bracelets will be awarded. “Mizrachi has completed what might be the most impressive feat in poker history by winning the two most difficult tournaments to win in the same year,” said WSOP Chief Executive Officer Ty Stewart.
We also go beyond live hands and chip counts. You can add our WSOP Main Event live reporting page to your favorites right now, so when cards go in the air, you’ll have instant access from the get-go. PokerNews will also have the usual highlight banner on our homepage throughout the WSOP, so getting to the WSOP live updates is always only one click away. This five-week leaderboard competition will reward the best performers in WSOP Daily Deepstacks with 50 tournament tickets to the PokerNews Deepstack Championship. “It’s another example of how we’re continuing to innovate and elevate poker media.”
Most other poker rooms around town will have a regular offering of daily tournaments, and they can be convenient if you are staying nearby. But it’s Las Vegas, and we don’t stop playing poker just because the WSOP left town. I’ve won every tournament I’ve ever played heads-up in PLO. You don’t get punished for that as you would in no-limit, because the crux of the game is played post-flop. The way I would describe it is that preflop, when you’re playing no-limit pokernewsdaily.com hold’em, you can make some really big mistakes.
🎤🔥@brucebuffer just delivered a “Shuffle up and deal! But a late dip puts him in a perilous position heading into Tuesday afternoon’s session. He’ll take 106,500,000 into night two of this three-day marathon. The 22-year-old bagged up 212,000,000 to remain the favorite to walk away with the championship bracelet and the first-place prize of $10,000,000.
Prior to the introduction of gold bracelets, WSOP event winners received grey trophies for their accomplishment. In 1972, the WSOP established the $10,000 buy-in for the Main Event and made it a freezeout tournament, two stipulations that stand to this day. While Binion’s prediction would prove accurate, the casino titan likely had no idea just how large the event would eventually grow. During the early days of the WSOP, Benny Binion famously told Doyle Brunson “You know, Doyle, someday we may have a hundred people in this tournament”. Jarod Minghini (Lake Tahoe, Nevada, United States) – 23,600,000 ChipsJarod Minghini, 37, is a poker tournament grinder based out of Lake Tahoe, Nevada. A member of the Pokercode collective, Bojovic’s largest career score of $134,617 came from his eighth place finish in the 2024 WSOP Europe Main Event, contributing to his live tournament career winnings total of over $700 thousand.
Leaving the world of professional poker, Asi Moshe has returned in spectacular fashion, winning his fifth WSOP bracelet after outlasting 1,792 total entrants in the $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em Freezeout. Stud specialist Matt Grapenthien wins his second WSOP bracelet in his favorite poker format. Harrah’s Atlantic City hosts the WSOP Circuit August 13-24, 2026, offering 18 WSOP Circuit ring events with a $600,000 guaranteed No-Limit Hold’em Main Event.
For players in Nevada, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, WSOP Online has become something worth paying attention to. This app is the essential tool for player wanting to take advantage of the full event experience Playing online poker should always be fun. If “poker winnings” isn’t enough to satisfy Nevada operators, the Las Vegas poker landscape could face hard times in the future. On the other hand, it could create huge hurdles for people to play high-stakes poker in Sin City.
For this last event of the summer, a total of 1,699 entries were recorded by the time late registration closed at the end of Level 10. After a day filled with “ups and downs, ups and downs,” Wong finally got his hands on the bracelet he had been chasing. The Hong Kong-based player already had several strong results to his name, including a 13th-place finish in the Monster Stack earlier this summer. Wong explained that he began playing poker in 2013 by “learning and learning more,” but has been taking tournaments much more seriously over the last two years. After navigating a slow-paced final table where the average stack never climbed much above ten big blinds, Wong defeated Ryuta Nakai heads-up to capture his first WSOP bracelet and the top prize of $216,286.
The third and final day began with five players remaining and Frank in the lead. Earlier this series, he became the first player to surpass $25 million in bracelet-event cashes. It has been a truly incredible week at the 2026 World Series of Poker, with four players near the very top of the all-time bracelet leaderboard adding to their legacies with massive wins in Sin City.
Congya Zhang, the last woman remaining in the field, was one of the first day 7 casualties. Dylan Smith, who recently added a WSOP bracelet to his 2024 World Poker Tour Rock -n- Roll Poker Open title, also remains in the hunt. Brunson has 13 big blinds to start day 8, as he looks to join his father, the late, legendary Doyle Brunson, among the pantheon of world champions. So if I don’t give up, and I play hard, I can be the chip leader in one orbit.” It’s hard for someone to get really lucky for seven days straight. Givens is just a hair ahead of Shaun Deeb, who finished day 7 in sixth place overall, with 31,300,000.
There’s only one previous bracelet winner in the top 10, in Australia’s Malcolm Trayner. He’s followed closely by Canadian DJ Sharma, who has 9,840,000 after a wild stretch on one of the featured tables with bracelet winner and former chip leader Will Givens. Here’s a look at the broadcast schedule for the 2026 tournament. Here’s everything you need to know about the World Series of Poker Main Event, including TV channel and streaming options for the national tournament.
Stay tuned to PokerNews all summer long for exclusive coverage from inside the ropes at the 2025 World Series of Poker. The Poker Hall of Fame isn’t the only focus of the summer. There’s a new owner, but the prestige and thrill of chasing bracelets remains the same.