button in SafariTate Leads The Way in Badugi; Over 30 Bracelet Winners Remain
Yesterday at the 2026 World Series of Poker at Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas, 554 entrants came out to join the first draw tournament of the series. Event #8: $1,500 Badugi saw many of the game's greats come out to generate a prize pool of $735,435 that ensured that 84 players would get a piece of it. As the dust settled yesterday, just 99 players remained with any chance of winning the $141,963 first-place prize and the WSOP bracelet.
Leading the way among the survivors is Arizona poker player Brian Tate (428,000). Last year, Tate got quite close to winning a bracelet with a 4th place finish at the $10k 8-Game Championship and a 5th place at the $10k 2-7 Triple Draw Championship. Starting his summer with a significant chip lead in one of the early events of the series, Tate looks to better those finishes from last year and conquer his first WSOP bracelet, and advancement from today is the first step toward that goal.
Lok Chan (348,000) and Satoshi Tanaka (329,000) round out the podium.
Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brian Tate | United States | 428,000 | 86 |
| 2 | Lok Chan | Hong Kong | 348,000 | 70 |
| 3 | Satoshi Tanaka | United States | 329,000 | 66 |
| 4 | Kevin Xu | United States | 307,000 | 61 |
| 5 | Ryan Hoenig | United States | 297,000 | 59 |
| 6 | Matthew Wantman | United States | 292,000 | 58 |
| 7 | Dominick Sarle | United States | 285,000 | 57 |
| 8 | Frank Muir | United States | 277,000 | 55 |
| 9 | Alexander Bitsakis | Canada | 275,000 | 55 |
| 10 | Jampana Appalaraju | United States | 255,000 | 51 |
Just shy of a third of the remaining field are WSOP bracelet winners. Among the other survivors are bracelet winners like Ryan Hoenig (297,000), Ryan Riess (193,000), Jean-Robert Bellande (168,000), Andrew Barber (125,000), and 8-time WSOP bracelet winner Benny Glaser (88,000). Each one is looking to start their summer off with a bang.
Play will resume at 1 p.m. local time with Level 16, blinds at 3,000/5,000 and limits at 5,000/10,000. Levels will last one hour each, and a 15-minute break will occur at the conclusion of every two levels. A 60-minute dinner break will begin after Level 21, and play will continue until the end of Level 25.
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