By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · July 8, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen
The 2026 World Series of Poker Main Event locked its official field at 9,208 entries when late registration closed midway through Day 2D at Horseshoe Las Vegas on Tuesday evening. The number places this year's tournament fourth in the Main Event's 57-year history, behind only the 2024 (10,112), 2023 (10,043) and 2025 (9,735) renewals, and comfortably ahead of the previous benchmark set in 2006, when a then-record 8,773 players took their seats at the Rio.
The prize pool now stands at US$85,634,400. Under the payout structure released by tournament staff on Tuesday night, 1,382 finishers, roughly 15 per cent of the field, will cash for at least the minimum payout of US$15,000, or 1.5 times the buy-in. The champion, to be crowned in the early hours of Saturday, July 18, will take home a flat US$10 million and the game's most coveted piece of gold. That is one of only three occasions in Main Event history that the first prize has been fixed rather than allowed to float with the field, and the first since a similar structure was used briefly in the early 2010s.
PokerNews reporters put the Day 2D late-registration figure at 820, an unusually high tally for the tournament's final entry window and one that had a marked effect on the size of the prize pool. Total chips in play are now approximately 837 million, distributed across the 3,294 combined survivors who take their seats when Day 3 begins at 11 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday, July 8. Average stack starts at roughly 254,000, or 254 big blinds at the Day 3 opening level of 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big-blind ante.
Rossitto Leads Day 2D as Fenster Announces Himself
The overnight chip lead across Day 2D belongs to American Michael Rossitto, whose 770,500-chip bag was the largest of the 2,034 players who survived from the day's starting 4,458 entrants. Rossitto has more than US$5.3 million in live tournament cashes and won a bracelet in the 2019 US$3,000 Six-Max event, but has been quiet through most of the 2026 series. His run through Day 2D featured a three-street value hand against a former Main Event final-tablist that vaulted him past 700,000 by the last level.
Behind him sits Jeff Fenster, the founder of the Everbowl restaurant chain and host of the Evergreen Podcast, who registered on the Day 2D late-reg window without a firm plan to play, then closed the night in third at 747,000. "I wasn't even planning to sit down today," Fenster told PokerNews at the dinner break. "My schedule cleared, I put in my ten grand, and I just kept running into hands. It's a wild day." Yannick Schumacher of Germany rounds out the top three at 738,000. Robert Gill (728,500), Joseph Baghdalian (705,000), Farid Jattin of Colombia (630,000) and Canada's Dhiraj Sharma (623,500) fill out the next tier.
The Canadian Angle Runs Through Sharma
For Canadian audiences, the headline is Sharma's 623,500-chip Day 2D bag. The 34-year-old Toronto-area business analyst turned mid-stakes tournament grinder is not a household name in the way Daniel Negreanu or Kristen Foxen are, but he has built a US$400,000 live-tournament resume over the past four years and cashed twice in the 2025 WSOP series. His Day 2D run turned on a double-up through a three-bet pot in Level 12, when his aces held against ace-king all-in on a nine-high flop.
Sharma is one of at least a dozen Canadians confirmed to have advanced through the various Day 2 flights, though WSOP.com's live database does not tag survivors by nationality and the full count will not be verified until table-draw sheets are published Wednesday morning. Toronto pro Matt Salsberg, who bagged 205,999 chips at the end of Day 1C, played through Day 2D on Tuesday but had not appeared in the confirmed top 20 by press time. Freddy Deeb, the two-time bracelet winner who lived in the Greater Toronto Area from 2003 through 2008, closed Day 1C with 267,800 and remains alive. Alex Foxen, the American who married Kristen (Bicknell) Foxen, the Ottawa-born four-time bracelet winner, bagged 493,500 on Day 2D for a top-25 stack.
Kristen Foxen herself, whose three-bracelet 2026 campaign has already made her the most decorated Canadian at this year's series, was not in the Main Event's Day 2 field. She elected to skip the tournament to focus on the year-end high-roller circuit, according to a statement issued to PokerNews last week.
The Broader Canadian Ledger
The 2026 series remains the strongest year for Canadian bracelet production in a decade. Four Canadian passport holders have collected gold this summer: Foxen in the US$25,000 High Roller (six-max) and the US$1,000 Super Turbo Bounty; Marc-Andre Alcindor in the Big O; Marc-Etienne Normand in the PLO Hi-Lo; and, most notably, Daniel Negreanu in the US$100,000 High Roller Pot-Limit Omaha on July 2, which delivered the eight-time bracelet winner a career-best PLO score of US$2,257,718.
Negreanu's win, which came during a five-day stretch during which the sandbox systems supporting live-blog aggregation across several news outlets were affected by an unrelated technical incident, deserves a closer look. He returned to Day 3 of Event #76 with the second-largest of the four remaining stacks in a US$100,000 buy-in field that drew 83 entries and a US$7.968 million prize pool. He defeated Russia's Artur Martirosian in a heads-up match that Negreanu closed with king-nine-three-deuce, hitting a straight on a broadway flop to overcome Martirosian's aces. It was Negreanu's eighth career bracelet, tying him with Nick Schulman for tenth on the all-time list, and pushed his lifetime live-tournament earnings past US$60 million.
OntarioPoker's coverage of Negreanu's win is being posted separately as part of a Main Event tracker refresh, and the tally of Canadian bracelet money on the summer now sits at US$4.65 million, according to figures compiled from WSOP.com and PokerNews.
Day 3 Structure and the Money Bubble
Wednesday's Day 3 is scheduled for five 90-minute levels with 15-minute breaks after each and a 75-minute dinner break at level completion. Blinds resume at 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big-blind ante and are set to escalate to 3,000/6,000 by the last level of the night. The projected money bubble sits at 1,382 finishers; based on the 3,294 combined starters and the average bust rate through Day 3 of the 2025 tournament, the bubble is expected to burst late in Level 5 or in the early portion of Level 6, which will play out on Thursday, July 9.
From the bubble down, the payout curve is steeply back-loaded. The 1,382nd-place finisher collects US$15,000. The 400th-place finisher collects US$50,000. The 100th-place finisher collects roughly US$150,000. The top nine collect at least US$1 million each, with the runner-up at approximately US$7 million and the champion at the fixed US$10 million figure. Final-table bracelet-and-broadcast conversions on ESPN over-the-air begin with Day 5 coverage on July 12 and run through the heads-up crown on July 18.
| Milestone | Value |
|---|---|
| Total field | 9,208 entries |
| All-time rank | Fourth-largest in Main Event history |
| Prize pool (USD) | $85,634,400 |
| Total chips in play | ~837 million |
| Players remaining (Day 3 start) | 3,294 |
| Average stack (Day 3 start) | ~254,000 (254bb) |
| Payouts (top 15%) | 1,382 finishers cash |
| Min-cash (USD) | $15,000 |
| First prize (USD, fixed) | $10,000,000 |
Day 2D Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michael Rossitto | United States | 770,500 | 385 |
| 2 | Jeff Fenster | United States | 747,000 | 374 |
| 3 | Yannick Schumacher | Germany | 738,000 | 369 |
| 4 | Robert Gill | United States | 728,500 | 364 |
| 5 | Joseph Baghdalian | United States | 705,000 | 353 |
| 6 | Farid Jattin | Colombia | 630,000 | 315 |
| 7 | Dhiraj Sharma | Canada | 623,500 | 312 |
| 8 | Victor Dong | United States | 620,000 | 310 |
| 9 | Patrik Jaros | Czechia | 614,500 | 307 |
| 10 | Terrance Reid | United States | 597,500 | 299 |
Source: PokerNews Day 2D unofficial top-10 counts. Alternative reporting from Spade Poker lists France's Lorenzo Lavis at 808,000, which would displace Rossitto. Chip totals are unofficial until locked in the WSOP.com database Wednesday morning.
The Ontario Route into a Main Event Seat
Ontario players cross over into a Main Event seat primarily through the province's regulated online poker rooms. GGPoker Ontario ran the most aggressive satellite calendar of the spring, with a mix of C$5 flip satellites and C$550 direct qualifiers feeding into WSOP packages that included buy-in, seven nights at Horseshoe or a partner property, and travel. PokerStars Ontario ran a smaller Championship qualifier ladder tied to its Sunday Million schedule, and BetMGM Poker's Ontario product offered a Grind Rewards path in which sustained cash-game and tournament activity converted to Vegas package points.
The Ontario WSOP satellite route in detail is covered in a dedicated hub we maintain. Broadly, iGaming Ontario, the province's stand-alone Crown agency, does not require operators to disclose satellite volume figures, but the regulator's aggregate quarterly reports show poker gross gaming revenue of approximately C$81 million for fiscal 2024-25 and channelisation from the unregulated grey market to the licensed sites sitting above 90 per cent. Live-event qualifiers are explicitly listed among permitted promotional offerings under the Registrar's Standards for Internet Gaming, provided the eligibility rules are clearly disclosed and the packages are awarded through documented random or skill-based means.
How many of the 9,208 Main Event entries came from Ontario-regulated online qualifiers is not disclosed by any operator. The number is likely small in absolute terms but material for players who prefer a package to a direct US$10,000 buy-in.
Twitch, Broadcast, and the Wednesday Audience
The WSOP Video Twitch channel is scheduled to run Day 3 coverage from a feature table starting at 12 p.m. Pacific, with break-out streams on the PokerGO app for the featured Amazon and Mothership tables. GGPoker's editorial team is scheduled to open a Toronto-based watch party at their Bay Street office starting at 2 p.m. Eastern for the Ontario poker community, with room for approximately 60 attendees. Kevin Martin, the Vancouver-born Twitch personality who has been posting vlogs from Las Vegas but has not entered the tournament this year, is expected to co-stream sections of the day from the Rio parking lot.
PokerGO Plus subscribers will get the deepest coverage. The service is running feature-table streams from all four ESPN broadcast tables at Horseshoe with a 30-minute delay, alongside the hole-card-free Live LIVE stream from the Amazon Room. Coverage runs continuously from Wednesday through Saturday.
What to Watch
Three story arcs will define Wednesday's coverage. The first is whether defending champion Michael Mizrachi, who bagged 202,500 chips at the end of Day 2ABC, can extend the tournament's most compelling narrative into Day 3 and beyond. Only three players in Main Event history have won consecutive titles: Doyle Brunson in 1976-77, Stu Ungar in 1980-81 and Johnny Chan in 1987-88. Mizrachi is roughly at the average stack.
The second is whether Argentina's Gaspar Fernandez, who bagged 754,000 on Day 2ABC, can consolidate a Day 2 chip lead into a Day 3 hold. Fernandez faces a more crowded top table on Wednesday with Rossitto, Fenster, Schumacher and Lavis all in range.
The third, for Ontario, is Sharma's Day 3. A top-10 stack early on Day 2D does not guarantee a deep run, but historical data from the WSOP tournament database suggests players who bag a top-25 stack on Day 2D convert to a top-100 finish approximately 22 per cent of the time. That would be worth approximately US$150,000 gross, before tax; for a Toronto-area amateur, it would be a life-changing score.
Deeper coverage of Wednesday's action will follow later in the day. For updated Ontario satellite calendars, guarantee schedules and operator side-by-sides, our best poker sites in Ontario hub and the tournament schedule remain the primary reference.