With 44 players remaining in the early stages of Day 3 of the $10,500 WPT EveryOne for One Drop, Niko Koop (4,550,000) and Bin Weng (4,400,000) have distanced themselves from the field. Scott Baumstein (3,785,000), Tom Cannuli (2,625,000), and Joey LeBrun (2,620,000) round out the top five.
While everybody has $53,340 locked up, it’s simply dust in comparison to the eye-watering $2,561,480 top prize.
There’s no official prize for the “Last Woman Standing” in this event, it’s certainly an honor that the last two remaining women from the 1,676-entry field will want to achieve. Interestingly enough, the duo are on opposite sides of the poker spectrum.
Thi Xoa Nguyen, 1,650,000 chips (55bbs)
Credit: Hayley Hochstetler
Nguyen is no stranger to stranger to the poker scene, with her $692,558 in career tournament earnings ranking her 8th on Vietnam’s all-time money list. Her biggest cash ($76,112) came in 2016, when she final-tabled the WSOP $5K 6-Max, finishing 6th. She would eclipse her career-high with a 24th-placed finish today.
While Nguyen has no outright wins to her name, she is no stranger to running deep on major circuits. In her 13-year tournament career, she has made four EPT final tables, the aforementioned WSOP final table, and an APT final table.
If she looks familiar, you may remember her from her infamous fold on Day 2 of the 2019 PokerStars Players Championship, where she made a queens-over-aces full house on the river and managed to make an inspired, correct fold for her tournament life on the TV feature table against Athanasios Polychronopoulos, who was holding aces-over-queens.
Elisa Onay, 450,000 chips (15bbs)
Credit: Poker Media Australia
The relative unknown Onay wasn’t planning to play the One Drop but found herself waiting in line with her friend, so she shrugged her shoulders and decided to fire.
The former poker dealer only has $46,732 in career tournament earnings, with $20,000 of those coming at this year’s WSOP Main Event, where she finished in 978th. It was her first cash outside of her home country of Australia. Her career earnings are guaranteed to eclipse $100,000 by the end of the tournament with her One Drop cash.
Onay is no stranger to playing Australian high-roller events, with her prior top cash coming in the 2022 A$5,000 Super High-Roller at the Autumn Poker Championship in Sydney. Onay made the final table finished 8th for A$10,000 ($7,237).
All but one of her cashes have come since 2021, so it’s safe to say that she’s new to the tournament scene.
Onay says that she’s not concerned with the money at this stage of the tournament and simply has her eye on running as deep as she can.
