Like any mystery bounty poker tournament, the $1,000 Mystery Millions event at the 2026 WSOP has an obvious appeal: the chance to pull a huge mystery prize and win a fortune — without even making the final table.
The proof of that appeal is in the numbers. And with the final starting flights now done and dusted, we’re able to zoom out and see the complete picture — and it’s a pretty one.
Across six Day 1s, the full tally of entrants is 22,811.
That makes it the largest-ever $1K WSOP event, and the 4th largest WSOP tournament ever held.
The regular prizepool stands at over $10 million, with a further $6.8M to be awarded as bounties. The top bounty payout will be a cool million dollars.
Of the 22,811 players who ponied up, 1,236 have survived through to Day 2, which gets going at 1pm on Sunday. Blinds will be 10K/40K with a 40K big blind ante. There are over 900 million chips in play.
Winning a tournament of this size requires skill, focus, stamina and luck, and while over a thousand players will return for the combined Day 2, the field will quickly thin out.
Or so organizers hope; it’s currently scheduled to play 17 x 40-minute levels, or down to five players, on Sunday. If all goes to plan, a winner will be declared by the end of the day on Monday.
Every elimination worth a potential $1 million
Who that winner will be is obviously impossible to call at this point, but the starting flights have put forward two major chip leaders.
Top of the counts is Alfredo Sousa of Portugal, with 10.4M chips. Close behind is the USA’s Noah Workman with 10.1M.
These are the only two players with over 10 million chips. In fact, they’re also the only players with over 4 million chips.
Each has a stack of over 250 big blinds, but a look down the rankings reveals that things get very shallow, very quickly.
Sandeep Koralla, in third place, has 90bb. The Ukranian high roller Denys Chufarin, who sits around the 250th mark — in the top 20% of the field — has fewer than 25bb.
No one in the bottom 600 players has more than 15bb, and over 300 players will return for Day 2 with fewer than 10bb.
As a result, for want of a better word, Day 2 is expected to be something of a bloodbath. At least the bubble has burst, so everyone — even the 26 players who will start the day with 1bb or under — is in the money and eligible for a mystery bounty.
But with so many perillously short stacks, and a potential $1 million bounty prize on the heads of every single one of them, expect things to kick off right from the get go.
It’s gonna be a frenzy.
To watch the carnage for yourself, head to the Silver and Bronze sections of the Horseshoe Event Center from 1pm on Sunday.
Additional image courtesy of the Asian Poker Tour.
