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As the World Series of Poker Main Event moves into its final day, the remaining action will be dominated by the USA, breaking a run of four European champions in a row. Three players out of the final nine hail from the United States and the trio managed to see off the competition leaving the biggest part of the spoils all for themselves.
Final Day of the WSOP Main Event
It’s been a special year for the World Series of Poker. Finally, after the best part of two decades the attendance record for the Main Event has fallen. The last two years came incredibly close to topping the 8,773 strong field from 2006 when Jamie Gold took the $12 million first-place prize but 2023 saw the record obliterated.This year, 10,043 players ponied up the $10,000 buy-in and the top prize was upped to $12,100,000 to break the record on both fronts.
To save you the maths, that made for a $93,399,900 prize pool after the rake was taken out.
Currently, Steven Jones leads the way with 119 big blinds, closely followed by Daniel Weinman with 100. Adam Walton might be the tailender but with 83 big blinds he isn’t far behind and today promises to be a close fight.
Penultimate Day Recap
Yesterday’s action was 116 hands long and saw six of the final nine heading home with their dreams shattered.First to leave was Daniel Holzner who had been nursing a short stack for quite some time. A coinflip with his ace-jack versus pocket tens saw him heading to the rail.
Juan Maceiras was following him only a couple of hands later. The Spaniard was the Day 7 chip leader but it all went horribly wrong ever since. Toby Lewis didn’t last much longer. The Brit was tipped to make his reputation shine at this stage of the event but he couldn't get anything going.
Next was Dean Hutchison. The Scotsman was aiming to be the first Main Event winner from Scotland and lasting until the heads-up stage would have seen him overtake Niall Farrell as Scotland’s most successful live tournament player.
Ukrainian Ruslan Prydryk was happy to see all his opponents fall by the wayside as he too was nursing a tiny stack. He even doubled once Hutchison had busted but steadily those chips frittered away until he jammed his final 12bb in with QTs and faced a run out against the AJo of Daniel Weinman which saw the better hand win.
The last player to bust on Day 9 was German Jan-Peter Jachtmann, a previous winner of a WSOP gold bracelet who was vying to become the third German national to win the big one in only five years.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be, as his timing to three-bet jam king-queen saw him up against the pocket aces of Adam Walton and no help from the poker gods came.
Each of the three players remaining is now guaranteed a minimum payout of $4 million but the pay jumps are massive at this stage. Who can handle the pressure with so much at stake? We will see tonight when the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event champion is finally crowned after 10 days of hard-fought action.
Final Day Seats
Seat | Player | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 1 | Steven Jones | 238,000,000 | 119 |
| 2 | Adam Walton | 165,500,000 | 83 |
| 3 | Daniel Weinman | 199,000,000 | 100 |
