WSOP 2026 Week 2 Recap: 18 Bracelets Awarded, Monster Stack Madness, and Hellmuth’s Near Miss

Two weeks into WSOP 2026, eighteen bracelets are already off the table, nearly 12,000 players crammed into the Monster Stack, and Phil Hellmuth’s quest for bracelet #18 hit another dead end. Here’s what happened and what I think it all means.

What actually went down in the first two weeks?

The 57th annual World Series of Poker kicked off on May 26th at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas, with 100 bracelet events scheduled through July 15th. We’re barely a fifth of the way through and the storylines are already stacking up fast.

Let me hit the highlights that caught my attention:

• Event #9, $10K Omaha Hi-Lo — Scott Clements took down his 4th career bracelet for $450,176. The final table was stacked: Todd Brunson finished 3rd, Phil Hellmuth busted 7th. Clements doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how consistently he shows up in mixed game events.
• Event #11, GGMillion$ High Roller — Naseem Salem won $1,089,964. The online/WSOP crossover continues to grow.
• Event #7, $25K Heads Up — Dimitar Danchev grabbed $800,000. Heads-up events are always my favorite to follow — pure poker, zero hiding spots.
• Event #16, US Circuit Championship — Antonio Vargas won $439,605.
• Event #17, $10K 2-7 Lowball Championship — Japan’s Naoya Kihara took home $428,923. More on the growing Japanese poker scene in a bit.

And the big one still in progress: Event #18, the Monster Stack. $1,500 buy-in, 11,933 entries, $6,079,950 prize pool. Day 3 is currently underway. Those entry numbers are absolutely wild.

Stats sourced from WSOP.com and PokerNews live coverage.

Is the Hellmuth bracelet #18 storyline getting old, or is it still compelling?

I’ll be honest — every year I tell myself I won’t get sucked into the Hellmuth narrative, and every year I end up checking his results before anyone else’s. The man is 62 years old, holds 17 bracelets (the all-time record by a mile), and still shows up to WSOP like he has something to prove. Because in his mind, he does.

In Event #9, he made it to 7th place in the $10K Omaha Hi-Lo before getting knocked out by Weisman’s nut flush. His reaction? A sigh and two words: “Of course.” Classic Hellmuth. No explosion, no rant — just quiet resignation. And honestly, that hit different. The younger Hellmuth would’ve gone on a ten-minute tirade. This version almost seems… accepting? That’s either maturity or exhaustion, and I genuinely can’t tell which.

Here’s my take on whether he gets #18: I think he will, but probably not in a $10K event. Look at his recent bracelets — a lot of them came from $1,500 events where his people-reading skills absolutely destroy amateur fields. In $10K events, everyone at the table has serious skill, and the technical edge that used to separate Hellmuth from the pack has narrowed significantly over the past decade. The game has evolved, solvers have leveled the playing field at the top, and being “the best reader of people in poker history” matters less when your opponents are playing GTO-adjacent strategies.

But in a $1,500 event with 3,000+ entries? Half the field is making exploitable mistakes that Hellmuth can smell from across the room. That’s where bracelet #18 lives, in my opinion.

Why should anyone care about a 12,000-person Monster Stack?

Because it represents everything that makes poker great as a game for regular people.

Think about it: you can’t walk into a tennis tournament and play against the current US Open champion. You can’t show up to an NFL game and line up at quarterback. But you absolutely can sit down at a WSOP Monster Stack table with $1,500 and find yourself playing against bracelet winners, online crushers, and people who flew in from forty different countries. That’s kind of magical.

The Monster Stack format specifically favors this dynamic because of its deeper starting stack. You get more chips relative to the blinds, which means more room to actually play poker instead of just shoving and praying. For anyone who’s been grinding online and building their EV calculation skills, this is the kind of tournament where those skills actually translate.

I played a similarly structured large-field tournament a while back (not WSOP, a regional $500 buy-in with about 2,000 runners) and the experience was unforgettable. The sheer energy of hundreds of tables running simultaneously, the adrenaline of surviving each level, the social dynamics of sitting with complete strangers for hours. It’s a completely different animal from clicking buttons online.

Nearly 12,000 entries at a $1,500 buy-in also tells us something important about the state of poker: despite all the talk about poker being “dead” or “past its prime,” people are still showing up in massive numbers when the tournament structure and price point are right. WSOP isn’t going anywhere.

Who’s flying under the radar that deserves more attention?

Scott Clements — Four bracelets now, and I bet most casual poker fans couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. He’s exactly the type of player you should be studying if you’re interested in mixed games. The mixed game field at WSOP is significantly smaller and softer than Hold’em events, which means your ROI per dollar invested is often better. It’s a path to a bracelet that more people should consider, but it requires actually learning Omaha, Stud, Razz, and other variants. If you want to adapt your strategy to different player types, studying mixed game specialists is a masterclass in flexibility.

Naoya Kihara — Japan’s poker community has been quietly producing world-class players for the past five years. Kihara winning the $10K 2-7 Lowball Championship is not a fluke. The Japanese approach to poker tends to be extremely analytical and GTO-focused, which translates well to lowball games where emotional decision-making gets punished hard.

Monster Stack Day 3 survivors — With 11,933 entries, whoever wins this event will have beaten a field larger than most major music festivals. The eventual champion deserves serious recognition regardless of their poker pedigree.

What should regular players take away from all this?

If watching these results makes you want to book a flight to Vegas, here are some thoughts from someone who’s been through the grind:

Budget conservatively and stick to it. A WSOP trip including a couple of event buy-ins, hotel, flights, and food will run you $5,000-$10,000 depending on where you’re traveling from and how many events you play. Set that number before you leave and don’t deviate. Las Vegas is purpose-built to separate you from your money, and the tilt of busting a tournament can easily push you into the cash games with money you can’t afford to lose.

Physical stamina is not optional. A WSOP tournament day runs 10-12 hours. If your longest live session is 3 hours at your local card room, you are not prepared. Start training for endurance now — not just at the table, but your overall energy management. Sleep, hydration, nutrition, breaks. The players who consistently go deep in large-field events are the ones who treat the physical side seriously.

Start with side events. During WSOP season, every casino on the Strip runs their own tournament series. Wynn, Venetian, Aria — they all have events from $200 to $2,000+ that give you the live tournament experience without the WSOP price tag. Think of it as range thinking applied to your tournament schedule: you don’t want to be playing only premium events, you want a balanced mix.

The social value is underrated. You’ll meet poker players from every corner of the world. Those connections — the strategy conversations over late-night meals, the training group that forms from people you meet at the table — often deliver more long-term value than any single tournament result.

Where do I think this WSOP is headed?

We’re only two weeks in, but I’m already feeling like this could be a special year. The participation numbers are strong (Monster Stack alone justifies that statement), the mixed game fields are healthy, and we haven’t even gotten to the marquee events yet — the $50K Poker Players Championship, the $100K High Roller, and of course the Main Event in July.

The one thing I’m slightly conflicted about is the GGMillion$ events counting as WSOP bracelet events. I get why they do it — GGPoker is the official partner, online events expand access, and the prize pools are massive. But there’s something about winning a bracelet from your living room that feels qualitatively different from doing it at Horseshoe with the cameras rolling and the crowd watching. Maybe I’m being a traditionalist. Maybe in ten years this will seem as silly as people who complained about color TV poker broadcasts. But right now, it doesn’t sit perfectly with me.

The next five weeks will bring us the biggest events of the summer. I’m watching for Hellmuth’s continued bracelet hunt (he’ll definitely take shots at a few more events), the Monster Stack champion’s story, whether any player can string together multiple deep runs for a Player of the Year push, and continued strong showing from international players. Japan, Germany, and the UK have been sending increasingly competitive players to WSOP over the past few years, and I think we’ll see that trend accelerate.

Whatever happens, the first two weeks have already delivered enough stories to keep us talking all summer. And we haven’t even gotten to the Main Event yet.

Sources: WSOP.com,
PokerNews