Former World Champion Chris Moneymaker Bubbles the 2026 WSOP Main Event

Six players were all-in and at risk of elimination on the money bubble of the 2026 WSOP Main Event and one of them was the man who made today’s modern poker industry the way it is. Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 World Championship for $2.5m a whole 23 years ago, was all-in and at risk on the money bubble this year, before failing to survive. Somehow, poker’s greatest ever ambassador somehow still managed to win.

Bubble Bursts in WSOP Main Event

The money bubble was always going to be a quick one. With seven players needing to bust to put the other 1,382 into the money places, just a few minutes into play on Day 4, six players had busted. Suddenly, the stone bubble of the 2026 WSOP Main Event had arrived and with only one player needing to bust, there was tension in the air. A total of six players went all-in with their stacks at risk of elimination, and three of them survived, including Johan ‘YoH ViraL’ Guibert. But three did not.

The first of the all-ins to see an elimination featured the man who is partly for the game existing in its current form. When the accountant Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 Main Event for $2.5m, he inspired a generation of players to take up online poker and ape him in qualifying to the biggest poker tournament on Earth. Moneymaker was at risk when he moved all-in playing the board after it came with a full house of sevens over eights. His opponent Antonio Vargas was holding pocket aces for a superior full house and a warm round of applause greeted Moneymaker’s departure.

The 2020 Online Main Event winner, Bulgarian pro Stoyan Madanzhiev, went all-in with ace-king but couldn’t beat Gregory Brown’s pocket fives and on another table, Kazakhstani Zhaken Seitbekov lost with a top pair of aces against a flopped set of sixes for Dan Stavila.

The three busted players shared just two payouts of $15,000, but that still gave each man a return of $10,000, or money back for their Main Event entry. All that needed to be decided was who would win the money bubble consolation prize of a $25,000 WSOP Paradise package. Each player was dealt two hole cards, while a board of Q-Q-9-J-4 fell. Moneymaker’s deuce-five matched nothing, and Madanzhiev’s six-five was almost as bad. Zhaken Seitbekov won the $25,000 package, his king-deuce proving good enough by virtue of its kicker and attention returned to the Main Event still playing on in the background.

Sweilem Swimming in Chips

As soon as the money bubble burst, players departed quickly. Kristen Foxen (1,331^st) won herself a min-cash of $15,000, as did 2012 runner-up Jesse Sylvia (1,167^th), EPT Barcelona winner Stephen Song (1,049^th), British legend Chris Moorman (1,041^st), and Olivier Busquet (1,030^th) each of them scoring the same amount.

Inside the top 1,000, Jesse Lonis failed to initiate ‘Gorilla Mode’ in 921^st, while Canadian poker hero Alex Livingston (897^th), controversial character Ren Lin (746^th), 2017 champion Scott Blumstein (666^th), 2005 champ Joe Hachem (803^rd), and 2018 champion John Cynn (617^th) all made a healthy profit.

At a massive 9,208 entries, the 2026 World Championship is the fourth largest in poker history. Only the years between 2023 and 2025 have been larger and a top prize of $10,000,000 is the same as the one taken home by Michael Mizrachi 12 months ago. Day 4 ended with a new name at the top of the chipcounts, as American player Sam Sweilem topped the 533 survivors.

Bagging up a massive 3.8 million chips, Sweilem took chunks off Chris Brewer with a full house before rivering a flush against Eugene Teibloom. Close behind Sweilem in the chipcounts is Sweilem’s fellow U.S. players Steven O’Nan (3.6m) and Kyle Mart (3.48m), with Russian professional Artur Martirosian (3.49m) in the top five too.

Other Big Names Who Survived to Day 5

A lot of other big names remain in the hunt for poker’s most prestigious prize, Colombian pro Farid Jattin on 3,040,000 chips. He’s followed by high roller regular Brock Wilson (2,415,000), Aussie Daniel Hachem (2,110,000), four-time bracelet winner Alex Foxen (1,695,000), award-winning content creator Caitlin Comeskey (1,740,000), Japanese vlogger Masato Yokosawa (1,545,000), U.S. pro Sean Winter (1,525,000), 2025 WSOP Player of the Year Shaun Deeb (1,500,000), and WPT legend Tony Dunst (1,245,000) in the counts.

American player Ryan Leng almost hit seven figures in piling up 990,000 chips for Day 4, with Stephen Chidwick (760,000) someone no-one else will want at their table when the draw is made. Consistent MTT crushers Chino Rheem (655,000), Josh Arieh (610,000), Boris Angelov (580,000), Martin Zamani (545,000), David Peters (430,000), and Patrick Leonard (295,000) all made the final cut, while the reigning champion Michael Mizrachi survived with 440,000 chips, the equivalent of 22 big blinds, which he described as “plenty”. Mizrachi, a nine-time bracelet winner, hopes to go back-to-back and become the first repeat world champion since Johnny Chan way back in 1988. If he does so, ‘Grinder’ will equal Chan’s 10 WSOP titles.

Other than Mizrachi, another three former Main Event winners remain in the field. The 2019 winner Hossein Ensan bagged up an impressive stack of 2,580,000, while the 2004 world champion Greg ‘Fossilman’ Raymer (535,000) and 2013 winner Ryan Riess ‘The Beast’ (455,000) remain in with a chance of victory. Everyone who is left in the hunt for the title of being this year’s world champion is guaranteed to win a minimum of $32,500, but everyone now has eyes on the race to the final table and a guaranteed cash of $1,000,000.