By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · June 3, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen
LAS VEGAS - For the first time in the 2026 World Series of Poker, two Canadian players sit in the chip-leading group of two separate bracelet events on the same morning. The Day 8 close of play, on Tuesday night at Horseshoe Las Vegas, produced an Event #17 $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship Day 2 in which Toronto's Daniel Negreanu bagged a joint-second chip stack of 311,000 and an Event #15 $600 Deepstack Pot-Limit Omaha Day 2 in which Tara Dunn took the chip lead with 1,995,000. The two events, separated by ten dollar zeroes on the buy-in but identical in tournament-equity weight as bracelet events, both resume play on Wednesday afternoon.
The simultaneous chip-leader position is the first such moment in the early 2026 series for Canada. Daniel Ghionoiu's WSOPC Playground main event victory in May, Daniel Dvoress's Triton Montenegro triple, and Negreanu's Round of 16 elimination in the WSOP Heads-Up Championship on Sunday produced individual headline results, but never on the same Day 8 chip-count snapshot. The pattern fits the broader trend the iGaming Ontario regulator and the AGCO have been recording since the provincial regulated online market opened in April 2022: a Canadian-flagged player count at the WSOP that is on pace, in 2026, to be at or near a multi-year high.
Event #17: $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship
Event #17, the $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship, is one of the four mixed-game championship bracelets on the 2026 World Series schedule. The buy-in is unchanged from 2025 and the format remains a no-limit single-draw lowball variant in which the worst poker hand wins. Day 1 played out on Tuesday with 136 buy-ins, of which 58 survived to bag for Day 2. Negreanu's 311,000 chip count ties him with the United States' Chad Eveslage in joint-second, behind the Netherlands' Carlo van Ravenswoud at 319,000. The full top ten at the close of Day 1, as recorded in the PokerNews Day 8 recap, is as follows.
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carlo van Ravenswoud | Netherlands | 319,000 | 106 |
| T-2 | Chad Eveslage | United States | 311,000 | 104 |
| T-2 | Daniel Negreanu | Canada | 311,000 | 104 |
| 4 | Alex Foxen | United States | 299,000 | 100 |
| 5 | Paul Volpe | United States | 290,500 | 97 |
| 6 | Robert French | United States | 276,500 | 92 |
| 7 | John Hennigan | United States | 268,500 | 90 |
| 8 | Frank Kassela | United States | 254,500 | 85 |
| 9 | Shaun Deeb | United States | 244,500 | 82 |
| 10 | Scott Seiver | United States | 206,500 | 69 |
The field's character explains the importance of the chip-stack position. The Day 1 draw of the 2-7 Lowball Championship is, by some distance, the most concentrated mixed-game expert pool of the early 2026 series. Among Negreanu's nine Day 2 neighbours sit Alex Foxen, Paul Volpe, John Hennigan, Frank Kassela, Shaun Deeb, and Scott Seiver, who, between them, hold 23 WSOP gold bracelets. The top-ten chip leader board is, in expected-value terms, the strongest Day 2 starting alignment of the series so far.
Negreanu's appearance among the chip leaders carries an additional weight by virtue of his Sunday-night exit from the WSOP Heads-Up Championship, which closed on Monday with Bulgaria's Dimitar Danchev taking the bracelet for US$800,000. After bagging out of Event #7 in the Round of 16 for a US$60,000 cash, the Toronto-born player re-entered Event #11, the $10,000 GGMillion$ High Roller, on Monday and reached Day 2 with 154,000 chips. The 2-7 Lowball Championship is a parallel commitment alongside the GGMillion$ High Roller, and the chip stack he bagged on Tuesday night, in absolute and big-blind terms, sits in a more comfortable position than his Day 2 GGMillion$ stack of roughly 50 big blinds.
Late registration on Event #17 remains open through Day 2, with the registration window closing at the end of the eleventh level, expected to be approximately 2:15 pm Las Vegas time on Wednesday. The total field will not be known until the late-registration deadline passes. Negreanu's quest is for his eighth WSOP gold bracelet, which would tie him with Erik Seidel and Billy Baxter and move him past several modern-era contemporaries on the all-time list. His most recent bracelet remains the 2013 Big One for One Drop side-event bracelet, won at the Bellagio in the summer schedule of that year.
Event #15: $600 Deepstack Pot-Limit Omaha
Event #15, the $600 Deepstack Pot-Limit Omaha event, attracted 2,636 entries across Day 1, the largest non-Main Event Pot-Limit Omaha field of the early 2026 series. The total prize pool, by the published WSOP figures, was approximately US$1.45-million, with a top-prize line of US$171,589. Day 1 produced 117 survivors, with Tara Dunn the chip leader at 1,995,000.
Dunn, a Canadian recreational-circuit tournament player who has been a regular feature in the WSOP cash record since 2023, already has a 2026 cash on her ledger, having finished 35th in Event #6, the $1,500 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw, for an undisclosed payout earlier in the series. Her Day 1 chip lead in Event #15 puts her in front of Johnson Nguyen of the United States (1,785,000), Michael Rodrigues of Portugal (1,750,000) and Mikael Gronvik of Sweden (1,675,000). Martin Kabrhel, the five-time bracelet winner from the Czech Republic, sits among the survivors with 739,000 chips, roughly 37 big blinds.
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tara Dunn | Canada | 1,995,000 |
| 2 | Johnson Nguyen | United States | 1,785,000 |
| 3 | Michael Rodrigues | Portugal | 1,750,000 |
| 4 | Mikael Gronvik | Sweden | 1,675,000 |
| 5 | Randy Jacks | United States | 1,590,000 |
| 6 | Susan Genard | United States | 1,575,000 |
| 7 | Francisco Baruffi | Brazil | 1,550,000 |
| 8 | Zachary Schwartz | United States | 1,460,000 |
| 9 | Philip Ardire | United States | 1,455,000 |
| 10 | Mohamad Saadeghvaziri | United States | 1,330,000 |
The 117-player Day 2 field carries on at 11:00 am Las Vegas time on Wednesday and plays through until a winner is declared in a single sitting, the WSOP's standard format for the Deepstack Pot-Limit Omaha event. The bracket math, on the 117-player Day 2 starting field, sets up a likely fifteen-to-twenty-hour playing block on Wednesday and into Thursday, with the bracelet decided on a single elimination from there.
The Bigger Pattern
The Canadian bracelet count at the 2026 WSOP, as of Wednesday morning, remains at zero. Neither Negreanu's Round of 16 exit in Event #7 on Sunday nor Daniel Dvoress's quiet absence from the early series so far has produced a bracelet for the Canadian-flagged player pool. The 2025 series, by comparison, produced one Canadian bracelet across the first eight days of play, won by Toronto's Andy Hwang in Event #6 of that year. The 2024 series produced two Canadian bracelets in the same window. The 2026 absence is consistent with the broader live-tournament narrative this newsroom has been tracking: the Canadian-flagged player count is rising, the deep runs are increasing, but the bracelet conversion has been, so far, below the multi-year average.
The Tuesday-night Day 8 result is, on the chip-count snapshot alone, the most encouraging Canadian read of the series. Two Canadian chip leader positions in two bracelet events on the same day will, if either holds, produce a Canadian deep run on Wednesday into Thursday. The Event #17 $10,000 buy-in field, on the strength of the top-ten roster, is the more likely of the two to produce a final-table cash for Negreanu. The Event #15 $600 Deepstack PLO field, on the strength of Dunn's recreational background against a field that does not include the same mixed-game expert depth as Event #17, is the more likely of the two to produce a bracelet outright.
The Ontario Read
The provincial significance of Tuesday night's chip-count snapshot sits in the same broader pattern this newsroom has been tracking across the regulated Ontario market since it opened in April 2022. The Canadian-flagged player count at the WSOP, in 2026, continues to be on pace for a multi-year high, although the variance of the bracelet count, by its nature, can fall well below the median in any single year. For Ontario readers who play their poker on the regulated provincial sites, the practical takeaway is that GGPoker Ontario continues to be the only AGCO-registered operator running official WSOP and WSOPC satellites for players physically located in the province, and that FanDuel Poker Ontario, which launched today on Playtech iPoker software, will not run WSOP satellites in the 2026 series.
The summer commitment from the leading Canadian players in Las Vegas, on the established pattern, draws a noticeable amount of high-volume regulated Ontario online play out of the provincial peer-to-peer poker network across the back half of May and into June. The April 2026 iGaming Ontario monthly market performance report, which we covered in Sunday's report breakdown, recorded peer-to-peer poker NAGGR of $5.3-million on cash wagers of $128-million, the lowest single-month poker reading of the regulated market's four-year history. The May report, which the regulator will publish in late June, will record a further trough driven by the PokerStars Ontario closure on May 7. The seasonal off-ramp of the Canadian high-volume player base to the live WSOP schedule is, in modelling terms, a recurring factor in those provincial Ontario online poker readings.
The Negreanu and Dunn chip-count snapshot is, on its own, a single-day result. The deep runs of either or both of them across Wednesday and Thursday will be the more telling read. The early Day 8 chip leader board, in any case, is the first time in the 2026 WSOP that the Canadian-flagged player pool has produced two simultaneous chip leader positions on the same morning, and the result is consistent with the broader pattern the regulator, the operators and this newsroom have all been tracking.