The Muck · WSOP Daily Brief
Day 43
Day 2abc was a wood chipper. Of the 2,780 players who took a seat Monday, including 312 fresh late entries, only 1,260 bagged for Day 3, and Argentina's Gaspar Fernandez bagged biggest at 754,000. The defending champion had himself a day: Michael Mizrachi tripled 73,000 into 202,500 and told Jeff Platt it's 'looking like a repeat,' while his son Paul sits on 197,200 from the other Day 2 flight. Elsewhere: Mike Matusow got a one-round penalty for showing his cards, Davidi Kitai flopped aces full and lost to quads for nearly everything, and a TikTok engineer won bracelet number 85 in his second recorded live cash. Late registration closes for good this afternoon on Day 2d, when we finally learn whether this Main Event catches last year's record. The math says probably not, but the math said 4,694 people wouldn't show up on a Sunday either.
Story 01 of 5
The first Day 2 flight combined the survivors of flights 1a through 1c on Monday, and it was a bloodbath, per PokerNews. The 2,468 returnees were joined by 312 late entrants, and by night's end only 1,260 players bagged for Wednesday's Day 3. Argentina's Gaspar Fernandez turned in the day's best work with 754,000, just over 300 big blinds, ahead of Mason Vieth (730,000) and Lithuania's Arturas Astrauskas (646,500), who started the day fourth on the leaderboard and stayed in the top three. The Day 2abc late entries pushed the field to 8,389 total and the prize pool to $78,017,700, with one late reg window left: Day 2d today, closing at the start of Level 8, around 3:15 p.m. PokerNews reported nearly 200 additional Day 2d registrations already in at time of writing, and the live event info page showed the count at 8,488 overnight.
Why it mattersThe record question gets answered today. Last year's 9,735 needs roughly 1,250 more entries beyond the overnight count, all through a single afternoon window, which would take a truly deranged Tuesday. An 8,500ish finish still makes this the third-largest Main Event ever and pushes the pool toward $80 million, so nobody at Caesars is crying into their rake. Also settled: Yulian Bogdanov, whose Day 1c lead we spent two days treating as an ESPN rumor, entered Day 2abc officially second in chips at 315,000 per the PokerNews live desk. The saga is over. ESPN was right. We are as surprised as you.
Story 02 of 5
Defending champion Michael Mizrachi started Day 2abc with a modest 73,000 and bagged 202,500, per PokerNews. 'I started the day with 72 or 73 and ended with 202, so it's looking like a repeat!' he told Jeff Platt after bagging. Greg Raymer did the Grinder one better among the former champions, riding a last-minute double up to 291,000, well above the 93,000ish average. Eight past Main Event winners played the flight in all. Meanwhile, Paul Mizrachi, the champ's son, bagged 197,200 on Day 1d in his first-ever Main Event, per a separate PokerNews feature. He returns today on Day 2d, having admitted he came in nervous after busting the Super Main Event in the Bahamas within two hours.
Why it mattersNo one has gone back to back in the Main Event since Johnny Chan in 1987 and 1988, and the reigning champ having triple the starting average with Day 3 looming is exactly the story ESPN paid for. The father-son angle makes it better: the Mizrachis are one good week from turning the world's biggest poker tournament into a family group chat. Which former champs survived the Day 2abc carnage beyond Mizrachi and Raymer was not published in our sources by press time, and given that flight lost more than half its field, that list matters.
Story 03 of 5
Zixuan Liu, a software engineer at TikTok in Cupertino, won Event #85 ($1,000 No-Limit Hold'em) for $219,391 and his first bracelet, outlasting a field of 1,732 entries, per PokerNews and the WSOP. Remarkably, the WSOP noted it was just the second recorded live cash of his career. Liu closed out heads-up play against Justin Shiao in under an hour, ending it with a rivered full house holding eight-four of diamonds. He called the win 'a turning point in his entire life' and told PokerNews he plans to spend part of the money on a new car for his wife, who has supported the poker hobby throughout.
Why it mattersThat's 85 bracelets down, 15 to go, and this one is the purest ROI story of the summer: two career cashes, one bracelet, one very good husband move. While the pros grind the Main Event, the undercard keeps minting normal people with six figures, which is the entire sales pitch of the WSOP in one result. The algorithm could never.
Story 04 of 5
Two very different kinds of suffering on Monday. Mike Matusow was handed a one-round penalty for exposing his cards during a Main Event hand, per PokerNews, a rules violation that briefly took the Mouth out of his seat during the deepest tournament of the year. And Belgian pro Davidi Kitai absorbed one of the sickest coolers of the series: holding pocket aces on an A-5-5-2-J board, his aces full lost the maximum to Michael Leib's pocket fives for quads, per PokerNews. Kitai was left with 1,400 chips, less than a big blind, and had spun it back to around 18,000 by the next count.
Why it mattersMatusow drawing a penalty in the Main Event is the least surprising sentence of the summer, but with the field this deep, a full round of dead hands is real equity torched. Kitai's hand is the one to clip: aces full of fives is a hand you simply cannot fold, losing with it for stacks is a tax on being alive, and grinding 1,400 chips back to 18,000 instead of walking into the Las Vegas night is why he has four bracelets. Whether either man bagged for Day 3 was not confirmed in our sources by press time.
Story 05 of 5
Mystery solved from yesterday's missing list: Naoya Kihara was not hiding in the Main Event field, he was playing Event #86, the $600 Ultra Stack, where he bagged 590,000 from Day 1a, per PokerNews. The event is turning into a monster: Day 1a drew 1,366 entries with Rajan Patel bagging the 2,690,000 flight lead, and Day 1b swelled to 2,424 entries with Neng Lee bagging 3,040,000 as the only player over three million. Two-time bracelet winner Ryan Bambrick (1,315,000) and 888poker ambassador Ian Simpson (635,000) also advanced from 1a, and Tag Team winner Breno Drumond sits 11th from 1b. Day 1c runs today, and all flights combine Wednesday. Last year's edition drew 7,057 entries.
Why it mattersKihara has cashed 14 times this summer with five final tables and back-to-back championship bracelets, and now he is deep-stacked in a field full of $600 satellites-into-nothing recreational players. That is the POY equivalent of a shark in the kiddie pool, and with third-place points at stake in the $1 million race, every big field he navigates matters. It also confirms he punted the Main Event start for volume elsewhere, or is planning a Day 2d entry today, which our sources have not addressed.
One new champion since yesterday's brief: Zixuan Liu in Event #85, the 85th bracelet of 100. Event #86 ($600 Ultra Stack) is mid-flights with Day 1c today, and Event #87 ($1,000 Mystery Bounty PLO) kicks off today per the WSOP media schedule.
First bracelet, second recorded live cash, 1,732 entries. TikTok engineer, new car for his wife incoming, per PokerNews and the WSOP.
Day 2abc counts are unofficial per PokerNews. These are the overnight leaders heading into Wednesday's Day 3; the 3,638 Day 1d survivors plus late entries play Day 2d today and will shuffle this board by tonight.
Roughly 1,520 players were eliminated on Day 2abc, all for nothing: the money bubble is still days away. PokerNews had not published named Day 2abc eliminations by our press time, and the fates of notables like Ryuta Nakai, Phil Hellmuth, Joe Cada, and Jason Koon (who returned with just 18,700) are flagged in missing until the full Day 3 counts land.
One-round penalty for exposing his cards, per PokerNews. Filed here as the day's most on-brand disciplinary action. Whether he bagged is unverified.
Aces full into quad fives left him 1,400 chips, per PokerNews. Spun back to 18,000 by the next count. Not a bustout, but it deserves a moment of silence.
Returns today on Day 2d with 86,900. Standings unchanged in our sources since the last SoMuchPoker update, which now predates a week of results.
Returns today on Day 2d with 156,300, nearly double Deeb's stack and 95 points back. Same flight, same day, same tournament. The sweat is scheduled.
Located: bagged 590,000 from Ultra Stack Day 1a. Fourteen cashes and five final tables this summer, and now deep-stacked in a huge-field event worth real points.
Returns today on Day 2d with 54,100, below starting stack. Level 6 blinds of 400/800 mean he is back at roughly 67 bigs. Alive is alive.