Phil Ivey is six players away from erasing the most conspicuous gap on poker’s most decorated résumé. The man many call the game’s greatest returns Thursday at the final table of the 2026 World Series of Poker $50,000 Poker Players Championship — the one major title that has eluded him across two decades of trying.
The Event #60 finale is down to its last six, and with no former champion among them, a first-time Poker Players champion is guaranteed. For Ivey, victory would mean a 12th WSOP bracelet, the coveted Chip Reese Memorial Trophy and $1,343,764. But it is the title itself — widely regarded as the hardest in poker to win — that has the rail buzzing.
The final six
England’s Benny Glaser carries the chip lead into the final day with 8,610,000, more than three million clear of the field. An eight-time bracelet winner and arguably the best mixed-game player alive, Glaser is chasing a ninth piece of gold after falling just short in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship earlier this summer.
Behind him sit Maxx Coleman (5,565,000), Josh Arieh (5,265,000) and Kristopher Tong (5,180,000), each within a hand or two of the lead. Ivey returns fifth with 5,135,000, while Philadelphia mixed-game specialist Paul Volpe is the short stack on 2,725,000 — though across nine rotating disciplines, no stack here is ever truly safe.
Arieh arrives as the form horse. The two-time bracelet winner already has four top-10 finishes this summer and sits firmly in the WSOP Player of the Year race; a deep run here could lift him to the top of that leaderboard.
The one that got away
No event exposes a complete player like the PPC. Spread across nine variants — from limit hold’em to 2-7 triple draw — it strips out the variance of any single game and rewards all-around mastery, which is why its final tables read like a Hall of Fame ballot rather than a lottery.
Ivey has cashed it a record six times for just over $1.4 million, yet has never lifted the trophy. His best run came in 2006, when the event was played as HORSE and he finished third; in the current nine-game format, sixth in 2023 is as close as he has come. He spent much of Day 4 nursing the shortest stack before a late surge dragged him back into contention.
For fans across Asia, where Ivey has long been a fixture in Macau’s biggest cash games and a familiar face on the Triton high-roller circuit, the storyline needs no translation: the GOAT, one table away from the single trophy that keeps slipping through his fingers.
How to watch
Play resumes at 1:30 p.m. Las Vegas time inside the new WSOP Thunderdome, opening in Level 24. Every hand streams on the WSOP YouTube channel on a roughly two-and-a-half-hour delay, so a new champion should be crowned late Thursday night in Vegas — Friday afternoon for railbirds tuning in from the region.