WSOP Main Event Draws Largest Field Since 2010

The World Series of Poker $10,000 World Championship Main Event closed the third and final starting day with 4,262 unique entrants for Day 1C. The combined field of 7,221 entrants is the third-largest Main Event field ever and first since 2010 to cross 7,000 entrants. Approximately 3,300 players survived the day with Jerome Brion leading with 248,000 in the bag.

Natasha Mercier finished above the 200,000-mark but didn’t know if she was going to play. “My day started with me coming here with hesitance. I know it’s going to be a very long tournament and I’m not sure I can handle it,” she said. Mercier is 27 weeks pregnant.

“So I wasn’t really that confident, but then I got a fun table and that made have fun during the day. I was winning hands, winning the flips, running and that was it,” she said.

“Jason was telling me to play slow and I told him I was going to play faster because I’m not sure how I’m going to be and survive the end of the tournament. Right now I’m fine, with a day off tomorrow Day 2 should be fine but I don’t know about the rest of the days.”

Johnny “F’n” Chan finished with twice the average stack. “My day was fantastic – I almost doubled up early and never looked back,” he said. “I’m looking forward to Wednesday and seeing what happens.”

Johnny Chan was excited to see the turnout for the Main Event. (Photo: PokerPhotoArchive.com)
“Players should relax, work out, have nice dinner tomorrow and go to be early to get a lot of rest,” he added for players wondering what to do on their off day.

“There’s a lot of energy here – a lot of new face,” Chan said. “Faces I’ve never seen before so it’s very exciting.”

Adam Levy landed inside the top ten counts with Nick Maimone, Andre Akkari, Brandon Shack-Harris and Aditya Agarwal finished near the top of the leaderboard.

Brandon Shack-Harris excels at Mixed Games but proved he can hang in No Limit Hold’em. (Photo: PokerPhotoArchive.com)
Rob Mizrachi, Talal Shakerchi, Joseph Cheong, Rainer Kempe, David ODB Baker and Phil Hui advance to Day 2 with average stacks.

Bertrand Grospellier, Marc-Etienne McLaughlin, Bruno Fitoussi and Neil Channing return with less than half the starting stack to Day 2 and will need help to survive the upcoming day.

The massive field juiced the prize pool to $67.8 million for the top 1,084 players. Each player at the final table is guaranteed at least $1 million and the winner earns $8.15 million for their efforts.

Seven previous Main Event champs played the flight today: Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen, Chris Ferguson, Joe Cada, Ryan Riess and Joe McKeehen – they all looked to have advanced to Day 2C.

Back-to-back ninth place finisher in the Main Event Mark Newhouse won’t be finishing ninth again, as he busted early in the day. John Racener, John Juanda, Russel Thomas, John Duthie and Blair Hinkle are just a handful of notable players that busted

The surviving players return for their Day 2 flight on Wednesday at noon PT. The previous two flights play their Day 2A/B on Tuesday at 11 am PT and the field won’t be joined as one until Day 3 on Wednesday.

Day 2A/B gets cards in the air at 11 am PT Tuesday and the first part of the day form 11:30 am – 4:30 pm PT broadcasts live exclusively on PokerGO. Then the 2017 Main Event goes live on ESPN for the first time this year from 4:30 pm – 8 pm PT, then the day’s broadcast finishes up on PokerGO from 8 – 8:30 pm PT.

A full list of chip counts and seating assignments can be found at WSOP.com.

Day 1C began with the Heads Up with Remko Podcast where Matt Affleck was the guest. The two talked all things Main Event and went in-depth about his bad beat to Jonathan Duhamel in the 2010 Main Event.

James Woods is best known in the poker world for his portrayal of Lester Diamond in Martin Scorsese’s classic “Casino.” The two-time Oscar nominee worked hard at improving his game over the last year and even entered an event by accident in game that he’d never played before.

Esther Taylor won the largest single prize for a female player in 2017 when she finished in third place for $543,713 in the $25,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller event. She spoke to Poker Central about how much her daughter taught her about winning.

Michael Mizrachi has had as many ups and downs as anyone in poker – possibly more. The South Florida pro’s Pokerography was released exclusively on PokerGO candidly discusses his past financial problems and winning the $50,000 Poker Players Championship twice.

Matt Stout is widely known as one of the friendliest guys in poker and his personality doesn’t end at the felt. He founded the Charity Series of Poker and held the tour’s most successful event to date on Sunday at the MGM Grand.