button in SafariSweet Sixteen Left in $25,000 High Roller H.O.R.S.E. With Sitbon and Kostritsyn Leading the Way
Stud Games: 15,000 Ante, 20,000 Bring-In, 50,000 Completion, 50,000-100,000 Limits
One more day remains before the 2026 World Series of Poker concludes at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas, but a couple of gold bracelets are still up for grabs. The final day of Event #97: $25,000 High Roller H.O.R.S.E. will see 16 players return on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, and it contains a slate of stars in the chase for the $872,052 top prize.
Thanks to a field of 148 total entries, the attendance of last year's edition was all but reached and generated a prize pool of $3,478,000, set to be shared among the top 23 finishers. Upon completion of nine 60-minute levels, only 16 players bagged up chips to compete for the coveted WSOP gold bracelet on what will be the final day of the summer series in Las Vegas bar the conclusion of this year's delayed Main Event final table.
The top of the leaderboard includes Julien Sitbon (3,800,000) and Alexander Kostritsyn (3,205,000), who have already pulled away from the rest of the contenders, whereas Ali Eslami is in distinct third place with 1,990,000.
Only one big bet behind are Walter Chambers and Ari Engel, while the WSOP Player of the Year leaderboard contenders Naoya Kihara (1,060,000), Alex Foxen (930,000) and Shaun Deeb (550,000) all have vital POY points in sight.
Top 10 Chip Counts After Day 2
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Julien Sitbon | France | 3,800,000 |
| 2 | Alexander Kostritsyn | Russian Federation | 3,205,000 |
| 3 | Ali Eslami | United States | 1,990,000 |
| 4 | Walter Chambers | United States | 1,885,000 |
| 5 | Ari Engel | Canada | 1,860,000 |
| 6 | Matthew Beinner | United States | 1,350,000 |
| 7 | Yueqi Zhu | China | 1,315,000 |
| 8 | Naoya Kihara | Japan | 1,060,000 |
| 9 | William Kerkaert | United States | 1,055,000 |
| 10 | Aaron Kupin | United States | 950,000 |
The penultimate tournament day kicked off with a flurry of late entrants to further increase the field size, and the shortest stack coming in, Paul Volpe, kicked off the shenanigans in style by quadrupling on the very first hand with a royal flush. Volpe would bow out soon after, re-enter, and also bust on the second bullet to come up empty-handed like many other top pros of the mixed games community.
Among those to appear and vanish without any cash prize were Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Scott Seiver, Benny Glaser, Jason Mercier and Marco Johnson to name all but a few of the big names.
Eight time WSOP bracelet winner Daniel Negreanu lost his entire stack within two hands and vividly exclaimed, “I hate playing with Mike Leah” when a bloated pot saw Matthew Beinner scoop with three aces to knock out Leah and leave Negreanu on fumes. Shortly thereafter, Negreanu lost the remainder of his stack to Kihara and quickly left the tournament area.
The action continued at an exhilarating pace and only cooled down when the field was whittled down to the final 27 contenders on the dinner break. Andrew Kelsall and Chino Rheem were eliminated soon after the action resumed and hand-for-hand mode commenced two spots away from the money. It took a total of 24 hands to lose two players, with Dan Smith running out of chips first before Phillip Hui was eliminated on the money bubble by Yueqi "Rich" Zhu in a hand of Razz to secure the rest of the field a min-cash of $50,340.
Carol Fuchs was the first casualty in the money and she was followed by Brian Yoon, Bryce Yockey, and David Steicke. In a duel of WSOP 2026 bracelet winners, Deeb hit a straight to knock out Matt Grapenthien, while Sitbon vaulted near the top of the leaderboard when Arthur Morris was eliminated in a three-way all-in that also involved Qinghai “Jack” Pan.
The last casualty of the day was Jeremy Ausmus, who succumbed in a duel of newly-found poker pro vloggers against Ari Engel in what turned out to be the final level of the night.
The final day is set to continue at 1 p.m. local time with blinds of 30,000-60,000 in flop games and limits of 60,000-120,000 in the stud variants. Stay tuned for one of the last mixed game bracelets to be awarded on the final day of the 2026 WSOP with all of the updates right here on PokerNews.