PokerNews live coverage of this event will begin on Day 3 (June 8). Until then, we will be keeping readers informed with updates on chip counts and core event statistics, including entries and prize pool. Scroll down to see more.
Event #18: $1,500 Monster Stack No-Limit Hold'em
Day 1d Completed
Day 1d of Event #18: $1,500 Monster Stack put a lot of butts in seats with 3,887 entries and $5,159,993 added to the prize pool. This brings the total prize pool up to $14,951,633.
There will be one last round of late registration when the 1,460 survivors of Day 1d return for Day 2d on Sunday. Once late registration closes, we will know exactly how monstrous this year's Monster Stack is.
According to the WSOP LIVE App, the top chip stack for the day belonged to Linyang Song who bagged (1,215,000). They were followed by Aleksei Dronov (1,075,000) and Samoul Mang (915,000) in second and third place, respectively.
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Linyang Song | Canada | 1,215,000 |
| 2 | Aleksei Dronov | Russia | 1,075,000 |
| 3 | Samoul Mang | United States | 915,000 |
| 4 | Davide Culotta | Italy | 895,000 |
| 5 | Michael Jukich | United States | 845,000 |
| 6 | Rehman Kassam | United Kingdom | 680,000 |
| 7 | Alexander Ivarsson | Sweden | 595,000 |
| 8 | Ian Modder | Canada | 582,500 |
| 9 | Jose Mas | United States | 555,500 |
| 10 | Ruben Correia | Portuguese | 527,000 |
Other notables who bought in and found a bag on Day 1d include Satoshi Tanaka (454,000), Scott Ball (408,000), Justin Fawcett (373,000), Upeshka Desilva (321,500), Andrew Moreno (267,000), Timur Margolin (266,500), Anthony Zinno (218,000), Bryan Schultz (217,000), Bradley Jansen (206,500), and poker legend Kathy Liebert (255,000).
Further down the table are players like Renji Mao (172,000), Julien Sitbon (163,500), Martin Zamani, Matt Glantz (140,000), Chris Moorman (132,500), Olga Iermolcheva (76,400), and poker hall of famer David Oppenheim (53,500).
These players will return at 11 a.m. local time on June 7 for Day 2d, the last separate flight of the event. The Day 2 survivors will all join one combined field on June 8 for Day 3 of the event.
The seat draw for Day 2d is available on the WSOP LIVE app from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
According to the WSOP LIVE app.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is set to usher in a new era for its winter flagship, WSOP Paradise, after confirming the festival will move from Atlantis Paradise Island to the luxury Baha Mar resort, also in the Bahamas.
The 2026 edition, slated to run from Tuesday, December 1 to Friday, December 18, will shuffle up and deal in a new home roughly six miles up the Bahamian coast from where Austria’s Bernhard Binder announced himself to the wider poker world, capturing the record-breaking 2025 WSOP Paradise Super Main Event just a few months ago.
In an announcement on social media platform X, the WSOP wrote, "The next chapter of WSOP Paradise is coming... Bigger. Better. Unmissable. This December, the world's fastest-growing poker event arrives at the stunning Baha Mar."
The fourth starting day has generated a field of 3,887 entries of which 1,460 players made it through ten levels to bag and tag their chips. They will return the following day to play another ten levels of 60 minutes each before the survivors of all Day 2 heats then combine to one field with the PokerNews coverage to pick up the action from there on.
The full chip counts will be published later tonight.
There are two ways to follow the World Series of Poker this summer. You can get lost in an endless sea of tweets, chip counts and social media beef, or you can tailor the coverage to match your exact interests.
PokerNews MyPlayers lets you do the latter, acting as a personalized feed for the players you actually care about. When a player on your radar gets written about, their chip count updated, or makes a final table, it lands directly in your custom feed with no searching required.
So if you want to build the ultimate summer rail list right now, look no further.
The poker world moves fast and during massive events, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of everyone. Whether you’re following a high-stakes pro, a local hero from your home game, or a family member chasing a bracelet, PokerNews makes it even easier with the new MyPlayers feed — your personalized updates feed for tracking the players you care about in one place.
Build your custom watchlist by clicking the star icon next to a player in the live reporting feed, and they’ll be pinned to the top of chip counts and tracked in a single, real-time feed as the action unfolds.
According to the WSOP LIVE app.
There was no shortage of big moments and big hands during the first week of the 2026 World Series of Poker (WSOP).
Daniel Negreanu lost a 10:1 chip lead thanks to a three-outer in the Sweet 16 of Event #7: $25,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'em Championship. Phil Hellmuth made an 18th bracelet run that fell short when he ran into the nut flush. And one player avoided complete disaster when he suffered a brutal cooler with quads.
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