If you haven't already, you can read our Day 1 recap here. If you don’t have the time, here are the cliffs:
- The $50K WSOP Poker Players Championship is one of the most coveted prizes in poker outside of the Main Event. It’s the bracelet all the pros want to win.
- 88 players entered on Day 1, and 68 made it through to Day 2 (where late registration is open until 7.30pm).
- Daniel Negreanu won it last year, and he made it through Day 1 with a big stack.
- Bruno Portaro is our plucky wildcard. The recreational player satellited into the event after flying over from Australia on Friday and telling his wife he was going to play it “by hook or by crook.” Portaro also made it through to Day 2, where we pick up the story.
All about the numbers
How big would the 2025 Poker Players Championship get? Late registration was open until 7.30pm today, when a 300,000 starting stack would still be good for 50 big blinds.
2025 bracelet winner Philip Sternheimer thought it would get over 100 runners for the first time since 2022.
Jesse Lonis and Luke Schwartz were two of the first names to add to the numbers today. If you don’t know Schwartz, he’s a colorful character from the UK who we haven’t seen for a while. If he goes deep, things could get interesting.
By mid-afternoon, numbers had swollen to 99, with Alex Foxen among the players entering.
As players were joining, others were departing. Vlogger Brad Owen came in with a dream, but it didn’t last long today, and he was out in 77th. Given how well Viktor Blom’s summer has gone, he might have fancied a deep run, but nothing worked for him today either, and he was eliminated in 75th.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man
Just after 4pm, we hit 100 entries. And there was only one player suitable for the occasion. Right on cue, Phil Hellmuth entered a few hours before late registration ended. He seemed restless, playing only a few orbits before we saw him stretching at Bobby’s Burgers in the Paris Casino. He wasn’t out, though, just hungry.
The rest of the players waited for their allotted dinner break, which was at the end of the next level.
By that time we had a new chip leader — Chris Vitch — after he eliminated Jesse Lonis and Hal Rotholz when he rivered a flush in a hand of Pot Limit Omaha. Lonis had flopped a set of sevens, Rotholz had flopped the straight, but Vitch’s double-suited kings saw him drag a monster and send two to the rail.
That pot saw Vitch stack over 1.5 million in chips – worth over 300 big blinds – with overnight chip leader Ali Eslami in second. Negreanu was still hovering around the bottom end of the top 10, and Portaro was just in his slipstream.
Portaro: 'Having an absolute ball'
We spoke with Portaro during the dinner break, and he was having the time of his life. It’s not easy to go toe-to-toe with the best in the world for two days, and he was making the best of it.
“I’m having an absolute ball,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of chips. I started the day a little bit short, but I’ve found some good spots and made some chips.
“I’ve been on three different tables. I played a huge PLO pot where I had queens versus jacks, and we both flopped a set. A lot of chips went into that pot.”
What’s his strategy been?
“Well, it’s not trying to outplay them," he said as only an Australian could. "They’re better than me. All I can do is play my game, and so far it’s working well.”
Kenney starts splashing around
Seven more players bought in before late registration closed, including David ‘ODB’ Baker, Joao Vieira and poker’s all-time leading money winner Bryn Kenney.
Kenney was in a splendid mood. All smiles. He was asked if he’d been playing much poker recently.
“Nah, I’ve not been playing much apart from the Tritons,” he said.
“You don’t need to play anything else,” a player quipped.
“No, just play the highest stakes and win,” Kenney joked. But it’s true. He won $2.7 million at Triton Jeju in March.
“I’ll splash around in here a bit,” he continued. “I don’t even know how to play some of these games well,” he joked again. Presumably. A few hours later his 300K starting stack was above a million and in the top six.
Prize money announced, Portaro out
With late reg closed, the prize money was announced. 17 players would get paid, and the winner would get $1,331,322 and the brand-new Chip Reese Trophy.
The rest of the night passed fairly quietly — if you ignored the rowdy and ultimately controversial end to the Millionaire Maker elsewhere in the room — but not without some tragedy. We lost Portaro to the rail in 43rd spot, but we’re sure that he’ll always remember his time here. He’s got a long flight back to Australia to mull it over.
Negreanu lifted our mood when he went for a tour with his vlogging equipment, settling on Hellmuth as his target.
“Phil Hellmuth!” he announced to the rail. “He’s finally here after sleeping for 33 hours.”
That got a laugh, and then it was back to more high-level poker.
Phil Ivey, Alex Foxen, Scott Seiver, and Jason Mercier are all killers in mixed games, but they fell victim late on Day 2.
But what of our central characters?
Like Kenney, Hellmuth spun his late-reg stack up — to over a million by the end of the day. He’ll be delighted with his work today, if not the 12-hour turnaround to the start of Day 3 tomorrow.
Kenney will keep 'splashing around' on Thursday and may even take some time tonight to read up on some rules before he goes to sleep.
We have a new chip leader. Old-schooler Erick Lindgren claimed the top spot ahead of Michael Mizrachi in second. Mizrachi has already won this event three times. Can he make it a fourth?
And Negreanu’s title defense continues, but not without some wobbles. He spent some of the last level as the short stack before rebounding slightly to end with a stack just slightly bigger than he started with two days ago.
Will he become only the second player, after Dan 'Jungleman' Cates, to go back-to-back in the Poker Players Championship?
We’ll learn more tomorrow when play restarts at 1pm. PokerGO will be livestreaming the action from 7pm.
$50K Poker Players Championship Day 2 - notable stacks
- 1. Erick Lindgren: 2,969,000
- 2. Michael Mizrachi: 2,048,000
- 3. Ali Eslami: 1,757,000
- 4. Chris Vitch: 1,739,000
- 9. Phil Hellmuth: 1,110,000
- 15. Bryn Kenney: 960,000
- 22. Mike Matusow: 694,000
- 32. Daniel Negreanu: 317,000
