The opening day of the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table was a long, grinding session that only eliminated two players out of the nine.
Play took place at the Horseshoe in Las Vegas and aired on ESPN2. Bruce Buffer kicked off the day with spirit, really giving some emotion to the first moments with his vocals.
Here are the chip stacks as the players started the day:
Jumalon, a 22-year-old American with very little live tournament experience, came in with a commanding lead and left the day right where he started it.
Ahead of play, he brushed off any suggestion of nerves, saying he planned to just play his cards and see what happened.
Feng stole the show with his final table fashion, a pink boa and rose lens glasses. He joked that he hadn't expected to run this deep and would've saved a better outfit for later days if he had.
Despite the massive chip lead, the day wasn't entirely clean for Jumalon. His biggest misstep came against Michael Gagliano, one of the more decorated players remaining.
Jumalon raised to 4M preflop with . Gagliana called with in the big blind.
The flop had tons of potential for the veteran. When action checked to him, Jumalon bet 3M into 11M.
The turn did nothing for either player, but Jumalon still bet 10M when Gagliano checked it over.
After thinking for a little longer than usual, Gagliano decided to call.
The river was where Lucas gave up, maybe deciding that he’d spent enough trying to bluff one of the toughest players at the table.
Michael checked, and Jumalon checked back, awarding a substantial pot to his opponent (but wincing convincingly as if it was a bad beat).
Afterwards, Michael appeared to spot some marks on one of his cards and asked the dealer to check it out.
A cheating scandal in this year's Main Event? No, not at all.
That hand cooled Jumalon off for a couple of hours, and the aggression that had defined his early play gave way to a tighter approach.
The early stretch of the day was cagey. For the first couple of hours, hands mostly played out as raise-and-take-it or raise, call, continuation-bet, fold, with the short stacks staying out of the way. Jumalon used that quiet period to push his stack past the 129 big blinds he'd started with.
Greg "FBT" Mueller, the most seasoned pro left in the field, kept things buttoned up early, sitting out the first 20 hands entirely before finding and four-betting to force a preflop fold from Rami Hammoud, who let go .
About two and a half hours into the stream, we had our first elimination.
Shaevel made the open to 4M, and Evagorou looked down at pocket Jacks.
With 23M left, there wasn’t any postflop playability for him. Evagorou shoved it in, covered by his opponent.
“You ready?” Shaevel casually asked.
“I am, yes,” Evagorou replied immediately.
And the chips were in. A classic coin flip, for a $250,000 payjump.
But the two remaining Jacks didn’t show up on the river; it was a 4c instead. Evagorou left the 2026 Main Event in 9th place, with $1,000,000 (before taxes).
Two-and-a-half hours later, another elimination.
Mario Boos, with just 16.5M remaining, chose to go for a double-up.
He put in 14M, leaving 2.5M behind.
The hands in front of him were not call-worthy.
offsuit, suited, offsuit, hands like that, until it got to Saaskilahti with .
A bit of thought, a bit of weighing the price, and he put Boos all-in.
Embraced by his rail, Boos waited for the board to either save him or send him out in 8th.
But the overcard appeared for Sasskilahti on the flop.
With only one eight left in the deck, the board ran out double tens.
Boos was eliminated in 8th place, winning $1,250,000 for himself.
By the time play wrapped on the first day of the final table, Lucas Jumalon still sat comfortably in front with 212,000,000 (84 big blinds).
Han Feng had staged the day's best climb, rising from near the bottom of the counts to second with 106,500,000, slipping past Lauri Saaskilahti (84,500,000) on the very last hand of the night.
The rest of the field trailed with shorter stacks:
- Rami Hammoud (45,500,000)
- Michael Gagliano (42,000,000)
- Jamie Shaevel (33,000,000)
- Greg Mueller (29,500,000)
It seems that Polymarket was right about Evagoras Evagorou having the lowest chances, but wrong about Mario Boos, who was priced higher than Feng and Saaskilahti.
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