Qinghai Pan Back on Top as $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo Championship Heads to an Extra Day

An early end was called to Day 3 of Event #77: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship as the clock crept past midnight and still four players alive with a chance to win the World Series of Poker gold bracelet.

Qinghai Pan ended the day in the same place he started it, atop the leaderboard with 5,265,000. The California native already has two WSOP bracelets, both online, and will be looking for a live title to add to his resume when play resumes tomorrow at noon local time. With WSOP cashes dating back to 2009, he’s already matched his best-ever finish in a live WSOP event.

Day 3 Chip Counts

Rank	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Bets
1	Qinghai Pan	United States	5,265,000	26
2	David Lin	United States	3,135,000	16
3	Luke Schwartz	United Kingdom	1,965,000	10
4	Andrey Zhigalov	Russia	795,000	4

David Lin, no stranger to Stud Hi-Lo final tables, sits in second with 3,135,000. Lin already made the final table of the $1,500 version of this event earlier this series, where he finished in seventh place, but he's the only one of the four remaining players without WSOP gold already on their career record.

Luke Schwartz was once one of the rising young stars of the game, a fixture on television during the poker boom. While the UK pro has stepped back from the game in recent years, he’s come back triumphant so far in 2025. This event marked his first WSOP cash since 2019, when he won his lone bracelet in the $10,000 2-7 Triple Draw Championship. He aims for bracelet No. 2 and enters the extra Day 4 in third place with 1,965,000.

Andrey Zhigalov ended up as the short stack with 795,000. Zhigaov is looking for his second bracelet this summer after taking down the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E., his second career victory in that same tournament.

Day 3 began at 1 p.m. local time with 15 players remaining out of a starting field of 186. Phil Hellmuth was in fourth place to begin the day and firmly in the hunt for bracelet No. 18 as he got off to a fast start, making a straight against Jordan Siegel’s rolled up queens to briefly take the chip lead. But it was all downhill for Hellmuth from there, accompanied by his usual profanity-laced rants. Pan was his favorite target throughout the day. “This f**king guy is running like God. He’s going to blow all those chips to somebody else later,” Hellmuth said while knocking over a chair after losing one pot to Pan.

Hellmuth was down to his last 160,000 and blamed it on his headphones, looking for a trash can to throw them in before depositing them onto a nearby table. Viktor Blom then ended up with trip fives and Hellmuth left in 13th place, his headphones still lying unclaimed on the table.

Jose Paz-Gutierrez (15th), Sachin Bhargava (14th), Siegel (12th), and Christopher Claassen (11th) also fell short of the final table. Blom then got in his last chips against Zhigalov, who ended up with a pair of nines. Blom couldn’t beat it and tossed his cards into the muck on his way to the rail in 10th place.

Zhigalov had taken the chip lead with 3,070,000 at the start of the nine-handed final table, with Pan in second with 2,760,000, followed by Lin at 2,190,000. Paul Zappulla was eliminated on one of the first hands by Lin’s trip kings. Jared Rubin, who spent most of the day hanging by a thread with a short stack, finally succumbed in eighth place when Tomasz Gluszko spiked a straight to beat his jacks. “You played awesome. You could not hold your head low on that,” tablemate Tim Frazin consoled him afterward.

Schwartz had fallen to the short stack before scooping a pot off Lin to double up. He then spiked a flush and got paid on seventh street by Zhigalov to take down a big pot and move up close to 2,000,000. Alex Livingston had dropped down to just 150,000 at one point, and while he managed to double up a few times, he eventually ran into Lin’s aces up to bust in seventh place.

Frazin livened up the final table with his one-liners and quick quips as he tried to battle back from a short stack, lamenting his inability to scoop a pot. He finally got his last chips in and was called by four players. Pan, Lin, Zhigalov, and Gluszko built a massive side pot that ended with Pan making a flush and low to scoop the entire pot, sending Frazin to the rail in sixth place. “That was an insane pot. You don’t see that ever,” Schwartz, the lone bystander at the table, said.

Pan moved up over 5,000,000 and into a massive chip lead over the remaining five players. Gluszko was eliminated in fifth place when Lin had tens and deuces to beat Gluszko’s pair of aces. The final four battled on through the rest of the level before tournament officials ordered an end to the day. The players protested, with Schwartz arguing to at least play one more level so he could jump into the $10,000 8-Game tomorrow, but to no avail.

Final Table payouts

Place	Player	Country	Earnings
1			$411,051
2			$274,023
3			$188,105
4			$132,423
5	Tomasz Gluszko	Poland	$95,665
6	Tim Frazin	United States	$70,970
7	Alex Livingston	Canada	$54,105
8	Jared Rubin	United States	$42,421