WSOP Day 26 Recap: Alex Foxen Wins $250,000 Super High Roller for First Bracelet and $4.5 million

Alex Foxen won his first-ever WSOP bracelet and the top prize of $4.5 million as he defeated a final table containing Phil Ivey, last year’s event winner Adrian Mateos and Player of the Year leader Dan Zack on Saturday night. With Foxen ending his own personal quest to join bracelet winners, there were five other events on Saturday too as the World Series entered the second half of its schedule in 2022.

Foxen Ends Bracelet Drought in Stunning Triumph

If there’s one bracelet event to win as your first, then most might pick the $250,000 Super High Roller, with its $4.5 million top prize. For Alex Foxen, however, the quest to end the argument of whether he was the best player never to win a bracelet is over already, just a few weeks after Dan Smith buried his own hoodoo in similar fashion.

Taking on a table of superstars, Foxen got the better of Brandon Steven heads-up after Dan Zack had become the first player to bust out on the night. After Zack’s exit, Phil Ivey lost his stack to Steven, before Adrian Mateos went out in fourth place, finally losing his grip on the title but cashing for $1.3m.

Watch how the whole final table played out on PokerGO as Foxen ended his drought and claimed a huge $4.5 million.

Liebert Leads the Seniors to Final Day

There are just 18 players left in the hunt for a gold bracelet and the $694,909 top prize as the $1,000-entry Seniors Championship has reached the final stages of its epic journey to glory. It is poker legend Kathy Liebert (21,000,000) who leads the remaining players and she has a strong lead over Day 2 chip leader Ben Sarnoff (15,500,000) and Eric Smidinger (15,500,000).

With other big names Andres Korn (10,550,000) and Mark Pett (8,675,000) both still in the hunt for gold, the final table of five players will be reached on Day 4. Liebert has to be the favorite to lead those five when play concludes.

Mike Watson Leads Final Table of Event #49

Mike Watson has earned almost $3 million on the World Series of Poker tour but has yet to win a gold bracelet event. He likely won’t have a better chance to seal the deal this series than in Event #49, where the Canadian holds the lead in the $2,000-entry NLHE event.

Watson bagged up 14.7 million chips, with Daniel Custodio (14.4m) not far behind him. With just seven players left, Greek player Ioannis Konstas has 9.3 million, with the rest of the field fairly short. Christopher Frank (6.6m), Walter Ripper (5.3m), Simeon Spasov (5.2m) and Evan Sandberg (3.8m) are all still on the chase for gold, however, so Watson will need to be at his best to finally end his bracelet curse.

Bach to the Future in Event #52

Triple WSOP bracelet winner David Bach is the chip leader in Event #52 with a massive chip-stack of 1,591,000 edging out  Nick Guagenti (1,584,000) and Mike Gorodinsky (1,546,000) in the $2,500-entry Nine-Game event.

Others to survive include six-time bracelet winner Daniel Negreanu (817,000), 2022 gold holder Scott Seiver (790,000), Brazilian pro Andre Akkari (768,000) and 16-time WSOP bracelet record-holder Phil Hellmuth, whose 124,000 is bottom of the 25 remaining players of the 191 entries.

Colossal Fields in Two Other Bracelet Events

Two other events closed for the day, with Day 1b of the $400-entry Colossus Event #51 seeing an incredible 7,704 total entries on the day, making 13,573 entrants overall.

Kou Vang (1,084,000) piled up a huge stack with other ‘milly’ baggers including Bruno Politano (1,016,000) Ryan Laplante (755,000), Steve Watts (400,000), Ryan Leng (280,000) and Joseph Cheong (275,000).

Some players to bust included Greg Raymer, Vanessa Kade and Women’s Hall of Famer JJ Liu.

In the $5,000-entry Mixed NLHE Event #53, Brazilian pro Joao Simao (1,705,000) leads the field, with 788 entries and just 72 survivors on Day 1. Big stacks to rival Simao on Day 2 include Frank Lagodich (1,530,000), Daniel Hachem (1,090,000), Joni Jouhkimainen (1, 015,000), Bryce Yockey (820,000), and the former WSOP Main Event runner-up and bracelet holder David Williams (695,000), with players such as Rainer Kempe, Sylvain Loosli, Anthony Zinno, and Chris Moorman all losing their stacks on the day.

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