The Muck · WSOP Daily Brief
Day 69
One sleep. The seat assignments are finally public and they are the most consequential thing anyone has published in three weeks: Evagoras Evagorou, the 15 big blind short stack, has to act with Lucas Jumalon and his 129 big blinds directly on his left, and Rami Hammoud, the second-biggest stack in the room, has Jumalon two seats to his left in the worst possible place. Advanced Poker Training ran the whole thing a million times and got Jumalon at 40.4 percent, then its founder went on the record picking Greg Mueller anyway, which is either brave or an admission that the model is not the product. The channel question we flagged yesterday is answered, and not by the WSOP: PokerNews says ESPN2 Monday, ESPN Tuesday and Wednesday. Faraz Jaka is hosting a watch party for a broadcast he is legally not allowed to show. The published fact sheet on these nine players still does not agree with itself about where Jamie Shaevel lives, how many Main Events he has cashed, or which country Greg Mueller played hockey in. And while everyone was staring at Paris, Bryn Kenney became the first player in history to reach $90 million in live tournament cashes.
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Seat assignments for Monday are now public through PokerNews' final table breakdown and Advanced Poker Training's simulation table, and they run: Seat 1 Lauri Saaskilahti (37.5M), Seat 2 Michael Gagliano (46.5M), Seat 3 Mario Boos (44M), Seat 4 Greg Mueller (48.5M), Seat 5 Jamie Shaevel (56M), Seat 6 Han Feng (25M), Seat 7 Rami Hammoud (79M), Seat 8 Evagoras Evagorou (22.5M), Seat 9 Lucas Jumalon (194M). That puts the shortest stack in the tournament directly to the right of the largest one. Per PokerNews, 'anytime Evagorou wants to steal the blinds, Jumalon can effortlessly call or re-shove to price him out,' and the recommendation is that Evagorou has to widen his shoving range from the hijack and cutoff rather than wait for a hand. Hammoud's problem is quieter and possibly worse. Steve Blay of Advanced Poker Training, whose model had Hammoud finishing nearly 5 percent below his ICM value, points at the seating as the main culprit: 'Hammoud has the unfortunate luck of having Jumalon two seats to his left. Whenever Hammoud reaches the cutoff or button, the two best opportunities to steal blinds, Jumalon is waiting in the blinds with a massive stack and maximum leverage. That's about as awkward a seating arrangement as you can get.' On the other side of the table, PokerNews has Saaskilahti in the one genuinely playable seat against the leader, acting after Jumalon, but with Gagliano behind him ready to squeeze, which is why the advice there is three-bet or fold and nothing in between.
Why it mattersFor twenty days everyone has been arguing about chip counts, which have not moved and will not move. The seat draw is the piece of information that actually changes the math, and it came out through poker media rather than the operator. Second in chips with 53 big blinds sounds like a good spot until you learn that both of Hammoud's blind-stealing seats hand the decision to a man with a third of the chips in play. Evagorou's situation is more brutal and simpler: he is the first Cypriot ever to reach this stage, he is playing his first Main Event, and the structure of the table means he cannot fold his way to anything. Somebody is going out ninth for $1,000,000 on Monday night and the seating chart has already nominated a candidate.
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Advanced Poker Training ran the final table 1,000,000 times and published the full distribution through PokerNews. Jumalon wins 40.4 percent and busts ninth 1.0 percent of the time. Then Hammoud 13.2, Shaevel 11.3, Mueller 10.9, Gagliano 7.0, Boos 6.5, Saaskilahti 5.2, Feng 3.0, Evagorou 2.5. Against ICM, Mueller is the biggest overperformer at plus 12.33 percent, Shaevel is plus 5.61, Jumalon is only plus 1.91, and Hammoud is the worst at minus 4.73. All five short stacks come in under their ICM number. Steve Blay, the Florida academic and developer behind the model, correctly picked Qui Nguyen to win in 2016 off 100 simulations, and this time he is not picking the favorite: 'The player who kept jumping off the page in my simulations was Greg Mueller. Time after time he found a way to outperform his chip stack.' On his own leader he is candid about what the number does not say: 'What surprised me was that all of this translated into only about 2 percent more prize money than his ICM expectation. I expected the chip leader's ability to bully the table to create a larger edge than that.' Blay says each bot carries over 40 configurable behavioral characteristics, declines to reveal them as trade secrets, and compares the exercise to election forecasting.
Why it mattersThe honest read of these numbers is not the 40.4 percent, it is the plus 1.91 percent. A player holding 35 percent of the chips at a nine-handed final table converts a historic stack into roughly two percent above what a spreadsheet with no personalities in it already said he was worth. That is the actual finding, and it is an argument that at this level, at this stage, chips do far less work than everybody assumes. Blay's Mueller pick is the other tell. He built the model, he published the model, and then he bet against it on vibes and experience, which is a strange thing to do in a press release for a training site and a very human thing to do about poker. The number to watch is not whether Jumalon wins. It is whether the four players the simulator says will underperform their ICM, led by Hammoud, actually do.
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Yesterday we flagged that WSOP.com named ESPN in one article and ESPN2 in another for the same night and that we could not resolve it. PokerNews resolved it on Friday: 'The final table will air on ESPN2 on Monday, and then ESPN on Tuesday and Wednesday. A champion will be crowned on the final day.' Both WSOP pages were right about their own night and neither said so. What has not been reconciled is the clock. PokerNews' Jon Sofen writes that Faraz Jaka's watch party begins 'at 9 p.m. PT on Monday,' which does not line up with the 5 p.m. PT cards-in-the-air time reported by Pokerfuse, the 6 p.m. PT broadcast time in WSOP.com's Jamie Gold feature, or the 9 p.m. EST in WSOP.com's own final table bios. Nine Eastern is six Pacific. We have not found a source that supports a 9 p.m. Pacific start and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Why it mattersThis is the third consecutive day that the single most basic piece of consumer information about the biggest poker broadcast of the year, what channel and what time, has required cross-referencing three publications to assemble. The WSOP has an ESPN deal it describes as its biggest media push in years, it has a $10,000,000 first prize, it has a 22-year-old breakout star, and it has spent the layoff letting outlets reverse-engineer the schedule from scattered sentences. Card Player already reported that fans lost ESPN+ streams during the summer because WSOP was not consistently listed as featured. Whatever the audience number is on Monday, some of it is going to be people who could not find the game.
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Faraz Jaka, who has over $10 million in Hendon Mob cashes and runs Jaka Coaching, is hosting a YouTube watch party for the final table alongside pro Scott Baumstein, per PokerNews. Viewers can ask strategy questions about hands as they happen. What viewers cannot do is watch the hands there. Jaka told his followers he is not permitted to show the ESPN2 stream on his channel because it would get the channel 'in some serious trouble,' so attendees have to run the cable network on a second screen and sync it themselves. 'It's gonna be a fun time. Grab some snacks, grab a drink, come join us,' Jaka said in the video. PokerNews tagged the piece with Scott Blumstein, the 2017 Main Event champion, while naming Scott Baumstein in the body. We have not confirmed which of the two is actually on the stream.
Why it mattersThis is the exact tradeoff the ESPN deal bought. Poker's audience in 2026 watches with commentary, in a chat, with someone explaining the ranges, which is the format that built the game's online following for a decade. Locking the feed behind a cable network means the co-viewing layer has to be assembled by hand out of two devices and a stopwatch, and the person doing the assembling is a pro giving away free strategy content to promote his coaching site. The WSOP got a broadcast partner and paid for it in shareability. Worth remembering that PokerNews reported ESPN's July 21 block did 173,000 and 186,000 viewers, numbers a decent poker YouTube channel does not consider unreachable.
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The published record on these nine players contradicts itself in three places. On Shaevel, WSOP.com's official Friday bio says he is 'from Chicago, Illinois, who is regular on the Midwestern poker circuit' with '7 times' cashed in the Main Event. PokerNews headlines its profile 'SoCal Cash Game Pro Jamie Shaevel Seeks Ultimate Tournament Win,' its Polymarket piece says he 'has now cashed in poker's world championship eight times,' and Steve Blay describes him as having 'eight Main Event cashes' and being 'a respected cash-game regular in Los Angeles.' Chicago or Los Angeles, seven or eight, take your pick. On Mueller, the WSOP says he 'was born in Switzerland, played professional hockey in Germany for nearly a decade,' while PokerNews' final table breakdown calls him 'a former NHL player.' Those are not the same claim. And the Michael Gagliano bracelet count we reported yesterday is still unsettled: the WSOP's bio credits him with three, PokerNews' Polymarket piece calls him 'a multiple-bracelet winner,' its own final table story reported his account of an unposted online mystery bounty fourth, and Card Player has used four all summer.
Why it mattersNone of these are catastrophic on their own. Together they are a picture of what a twenty-day layoff with no official information does to a story. When the operator does not publish a proper media kit, nine strangers get assembled from scraped databases and old interviews, and the errors compound because everyone is sourcing everyone else. Mueller is the one that will actually happen on television, because 'former NHL player' is exactly the kind of line a broadcast picks up and repeats, and per the WSOP he played in Germany. Somebody at ESPN should check the sheet before Monday.
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Bryn Kenney won the $100,000 King's Charity Super High Roller in Jeju for $1.6 million via a heads-up chop with Jesse Lonis, becoming the first player in history to pass $90 million in recorded live tournament cashes, per PokerNews. Kenney is now the first player to reach $70 million, $80 million and $90 million, all of them his own milestones on a list he has led for years. Stephen Chidwick sits about $1 million short of $80 million and roughly $11 million behind Kenney. The win landed on July 31, two days before the Main Event final table, in a room on the other side of the world from the one poker was watching.
Why it mattersThe all-time money list is the most cited and least meaningful statistic in poker, because it counts gross cashes, ignores buy-ins, ignores staking, and rewards playing the most expensive tournaments on earth more than it rewards winning them. Kenney passing $90 million says that he has played an enormous number of six-figure buy-ins very well, and it says nothing at all about what he cleared. That is not a knock on Kenney, it is a note on the number. What is genuinely notable is the gap. Chidwick, the second name on the list, is $11 million back, and the distance between first and second in an era with more high roller volume than ever suggests the top of that list may not change hands for a very long time.
Chip counts are unchanged and will be until Monday. What is new today is the seat draw, now public via PokerNews and Advanced Poker Training, and it is the most important thing published during the layoff. Evagorou, the 22.5M short stack, sits in Seat 8 with Jumalon's 194M directly on his left in Seat 9. Hammoud, second in chips, sits in Seat 7 with Jumalon two seats to his left, meaning both of his best blind-stealing positions hand the last decision to the leader. Saaskilahti in Seat 1 gets to act after Jumalon but has Gagliano behind him. Advanced Poker Training's million-simulation model gives Jumalon 40.4 percent to win, Hammoud 13.2, Shaevel 11.3, Mueller 10.9, Gagliano 7.0, Boos 6.5, Saaskilahti 5.2, Feng 3.0 and Evagorou 2.5. Broadcast: ESPN2 Monday, ESPN Tuesday and Wednesday, per PokerNews.
No Main Event eliminations. The final nine have not played a hand since July 13 and will not until Monday. The only finish in our sources today came from Jeju, on the other side of the world from the tournament everybody is watching.
Chopped heads-up with Bryn Kenney, who took the trophy and $1.6 million and became the first player to $90 million in live cashes, per PokerNews. The split terms were not published in the coverage we found.
Frozen until WSOP Paradise fires December 1. No new results in our sources.
Twenty-two back with nothing to play until Paradise. No new results in our sources.
Twenty-nine off the lead and idle until December. No new results in our sources.
Won the $100,000 King's Charity Super High Roller in Jeju for $1.6 million on a heads-up chop with Jesse Lonis, per PokerNews. He is the first to $70M, $80M and $90M. Stephen Chidwick is about $11 million behind and still short of $80 million.
Biggest overperformer against ICM in Advanced Poker Training's million-run model at plus 12.33 percent, and Steve Blay's official pick to win the whole thing over a leader the same model has at 40.4 percent.
The simulation says the historic chip lead is worth only 1.91 percent above his ICM expectation, which is the most interesting number published about this final table.