One-time WSOP Main Event finalist Kenny Hallaert scored a late night double knockout on Day 6 of the 2025 edition, leapfrogging Canada's Eric Afriat and a charging Michael Mizrachi to grab the chip lead for a dramatic Day 7.
The triumvirate of chip stack powerhouses will lead a field of 57 hopefuls into Saturday, where everyone will try to take one step closer to the $10,000,000 grand prize and poker immortality.
Hallaert, Afriat, and Mizrachi fit nicely into a basket of great storylines leading into the last two days of multi-table play before the final nine. Daehyung Lee, Chad Power, and Braxton Dunaway continued their climb on Friday, while Adam Hendrix was on a steady trip to the top ten.
Other fantasy players like Maksim Pisarenko and Nick Pupillo are still stacking up points for their team owners, while Greg Merson remains alive with one of the short stacks and a dream of a second Main Event championship. And not to be outdone, Leo Margets, the last woman standing for a second time, is still in the game.
Meanwhile, Will Kassouf will be back for at least one more go after a late double-up capped off what most people would call an annoying day (especially Tournament Director Bob Smith.)
Double knockout sets Day 7 tone
Hallaert's late surge came after he spent a large part of the session at the top of the counts before Afriat and Mizrachi dominated the narrative in the last level of the evening. A pair of pocket aces turned the tide for the chip leader after he flat-called when Jose Palomares shoved a short stack with 
. The subtlety worked and Derek Sudell threw 90 big blinds in with 
from the next seat over. Hallaert's aces held up and he stacked up the lead.
Mizrachi and Afriat had threatened to be the big story after both won giant pots in the late stages of the night. First, Mizrachi jumped ahead with a massive call, slapping a pair of sevens down on the table to beat a dusty bluff from Nazar Buhalov. Soon after, Afriat's stack bloated after a double knockout of his own, sending pocket aces and pocket queens to the rail when his jack-ten turned golden on the river.
It was a twisty end to an evening with enough to talk about already.
Kassouf won't go away
Will Kassouf talked his way to one of the bigger stacks on Day 5, and he threatened to gather up some serious momentum with an aces-and-kings cooler early on Day 6.
The good feelings were short lived, however, and what followed was somewhat unprecedented. It started days ago, but the conflict with floor staff reached a fever pitch after the time clock was called on Kassouf for the sixth time in the opening level. Tournament Director Bob Smith declared Kassouf's hand dead after he walked to the other side of the dealer and it only unraveled from there.
In a scene right out of any middle school, non-stop discussion and malicious compliance led to progressive discipline for Kassouf, and he was eventually placed on his own personal ten-second shot clock. It was promised that his restrictions would return to normal after an hour of timely behavior.
But the endless verbal tirade continued, reaching its worst just before the end of his restricted time period.
"You want to challenge me," Kassouf gestured at the table after talking non-stop for the entirety of his screen time. "The floor (staff) wants to challenge me. Jack Effel wants to challenge me. I'm ready."
Kassouf waved at the camera and called for 'Captain Jack' to visit him.
Nick Schulman, who was sitting in with Ali Nejad on PokerGO's Night Shift, questioned the intelligence of challenging Effel, the Senior VP of the WSOP for Caesars.
"A mere few decades ago, that's desert territory," Schulman said, referring to a vintage way to bury problems in the surrounding Mojave.
Through all of this, Kassouf's stack took a brutal hit. The restriction was eventually lifted and he was moved to a table with Afriat, who immediately went to work on being more obnoxious. A shaky stalemate developed and Kassouf was on the ropes before a late night double with queens kept him alive for Saturday.
Last woman standing
On the positive side of the storybook, France's Leo Margets was the last woman standing for the second time after Esther Taylor's elimination in the early part of Day 6. Her first was in 2009, where she eventually finished 27th out of 6,494 runners. Margets joins Maria Ho, Kelly Minkin, and Annie Duke in achieving the honor twice.
"I'm very grateful to be here," Margets told us on Friday. "In our lives, how many times in our life do we get to play Day 6 of the Main?'
She will now return for a Day 7 with just over 40 big blinds and the opportunity to be the first woman to make a WSOP Main Event final table since Barbara Enright did it in 1995.
$50K PLO heat check
The Main Event wasn't the only show at the WSOP on Friday. The $50K High Roller was playing down to a winner and Nguyen Le was there to scoop up the top prize of over $2.6 million. You may remember Le from just last week when he mounted an unlikely comeback to win the record-breaking BetMGM Championship for $777K over at the Aria.
His reason for jumping in the $50K at the last second was a twist.
"The credit card company let me pay with a credit card."
Day 7 of the 2025 Main Event will return on Saturday at 12 pm local time. Be sure to join PokerOrg once again from bell-to-bell for the race to the final table.
