James Mendoza Leads Final 5, $250K Bounty Still in Play in $10,000 Mystery Bounty

Day 2 of Event #11: $10,000 Mystery Bounty at the 2025 World Series of Poker (WSOP) at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas wrapped up on Monday night with just five players remaining — as well as the elusive $250,000 that avoided capture over 13 hours of play.

Leading the way into Day 3 is the Phillipines' James Mendoza with a stack of 10,620,000 ahead of fellow big stacks Alejandro Peinado and Yosef Fox, while short stacks Patrick Kennedy and Richard Green are biding their time.

Event #11: $10,000 Mystery Bounty Remaining Players

Seat	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	James Mendoza	United States	10,620,000	42
2	Richard Green	United States	4,600,000	18
3	Alejandro Peinado	Spain	6,900,000	28
4	Patrick Kennedy	United Kingdom	4,250,000	17
5	Yosef Fox	United States	4,700,000	19

Day 2 Action

There were 130 players who returned for Day 2, and it didn't take long for them to reach the money. Santhosh Suvarna, last year's $250,000 Super High Roller Champion, was the unlucky bubble player as he ran pocket eights into fishhooks.

Other players who made the money include Poker Hall of Famers Brian Rast and Erik Seidel, NFL great Calais Campbell, poker poker couple Alex Foxen and Kristen Foxen, four-time bracelet winner and recent documentary star Mike Matusow, and grinders like Nick Palma and Josh Reichard.

Green made a deep run propelled by a one-outer he delivered to Chao Duan early in the day, but his luck turned with two tables left as he check-raised the nut flush draw and couldn't improve against Yosef Fox in the biggest pot of the tournament up to that point.

Both Green and Fox made it to the final table as rising grinders Frank Lagodich fell in tenth place after three-bet jamming ace-seven and getting out-flopped by Cada's king-queen. Not long before, fan-favorite Michael "Texas Mike" Moncek bowed out in 11th place.

Though the action went quickly, the elusive $250,000 bounty remained in play all the way up to the final table, making for an interesting dynamic in the tournament's late stages. Still, the three $100,000 bounties went quickly to Moncek, Myles Mullaly and Frank Brannan.

Jordan Siegel and Mullaly were the first to go at the final table, while 2009 Main Event champion Joe Cada bowed out in seventh for $92,330 as he was out-flopped by Fox, who spent most of the day calling for red cards to varying results (similarly, his shouts of "one time" did little to bring him the $250,000 bounty).

Action will pick back up at noon local time on Level 31 with blinds of 125,000/250,000/250,000. The event will play down to a winner, who will earn one of the first WSOP bracelets of the summer and the $729,333 top prize.

Stay tuned as the PokerNews live reporting team will be back on-site tomorrow for continued coverage of the $10,000 Mystery Bounty.