Welcome back to PokerNews, the official media partner of the 2024 World Series of Poker and home of live updates from all bracelet events.
Today sees the Day 1b of Event #5: $1,000 Mystery Millions No-Limit Hold'em here at Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas. Live coverage of this event will start from Day 2.
This event has been on everyone's radar since the schedule was released, with the top bounty as well as the first place prize are guaranteed to be $1,000,000.
The second of four starting flights gets underway at 10 a.m. local time, with late registration open for 12 levels. There will be 20-minute breaks every four levels, with a 75-minute dinner break at the end of Level 16 (~7:00 p.m.).
The starting stack is 40,000 chips, with the plan for Day 1b to play 22 30-minute levels. Payouts start on Day 1, and for the surviving players, Day 2 resumes on Monday, June 3, at 11 a.m.
Last year's event saw a field of 18,188 players generate a prize pool of $4,587,950. The winner was Tyler Brown who defeated Guang Chen heads-up to win a cool $1,000,000.
“I took almost two years off poker," Brown told PokerNews. "I decided to come back at the end of last year, early this year, and it’s been unbelievable in these last six months.”
The event also saw two $1,000,000 bounties up for grabs, with Shant Marashlian the first player to pull the grand prize bounty early on Day 2. He was followed by Patrick Liang shortly after.
Year | Entries | Winner | Country | Payout | |
2023 | 18,188 | Tyler Brown | United States | $1,000,000 | |
2022 | 14,112 | Quincy Borland | United States | $750,120 |
Day 1a saw 2,246 players gather in the tournament area, with only 118 having chips to bag and tag at the close of play. Pete Chen performed the best, turning his 40,000 starting stack into a tournament-leading 3,150,000. Will someone surpass that total today?
End of Day 1a Top Ten Chip Counts
Rank | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Pete Chen | Taiwan | 3,150,000 | 63 |
2 | Uri Reichenstein | Israel | 2,225,000 | 45 |
3 | Akinobu Maeda | Japan | 2,080,000 | 42 |
4 | James Erickson | United States | 1,805,000 | 36 |
5 | Wojciech Barzantny | Austria | 1,500,000 | 30 |
6 | Milfred Sageer | United States | 1,500,000 | 30 |
7 | James Maita | United States | 1,500,000 | 30 |
8 | Zhao Xin | China | 1,395,000 | 28 |
9 | Andrew Moreno | United States | 1,370,000 | 27 |
10 | Arin Youssefian | United States | 1,345,000 | 27 |
Planning on playing this event? PokerNews activates MyStack for every WSOP event, regardless of that tournament's buy-in, allowing you to directly adjust your chip counts in our live reporting.
MyStack is a free poker tool that puts you in control of your chip counts on our live reporting pages. Once you have created a free PokerNews account, you can use MyStack to update your chip counts in real time; hopefully, your stack will continue increasing throughout the event!