Ivey is still chasing poker’s most prestigious title, sixteen years after his best performance of seventh place. Sadly, after a great series so far, he’ll now need to start focusing on next year.
The day was already failing to meet expectations as Ivey lost more than half of his starting stack, and then it got much worse as he tangled with Joseph Cheong, the third place finisher from the 2010 WSOP Main Event.
The action folded around to Ivey in the small blind who limped with Q♣ 2♣ and Cheong checked his option with Q♠7♦.
The flop ran out Q♥ J♠2♦ and Ivey led out for 1,000. Cheong called.
The 7♣ turn seemed innocuous enough and so Ivey followed through with a bet of 2,500 and Cheong called once more.
When the river came down the 4♦, Ivey jammed his remaining 11,000 and was promptly called off by Joseph Cheong, ending his 2025 Main Event run.
Ultimately, the series so far has been kind to Phil Ivey. A fifth place in the $100,000 Pot-Limit Omaha banked him $715,614, coming after a ninth-place finish in the $100,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller.
He also finished sixth for $378,296 in the $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller for a hat trick of final table appearances.
The final stats of the day were the total field at 8,694 entries with 6,457 challengers remaining as late registration continues into Day 2.
Defending Champ Jonathan Tamayo in the Mix
It’s a year since Jonathan Tamayo defeated the largest ever Main Event field to score a $10,000,000 payday. Now he’s back and one of more than 8,000 players challenging to win the biggest prize in poker.
Coming back to the same playing hall as last year to try again brought a different flavour of emotion than before. Speaking to PokerNews he said:
“It’s a lot more freeing. You don’t sweat the high-equity spots as much in a results-oriented way. You still focus on the process, but if something bad happens, it’s not the end of the world. That’s just MTT poker, it’s hard to replicate big spots.
“I looked at my starting stack of 60,000 chips and thought, ‘You’ve got to turn that into just over 600 million to win the Main Event.’ Once you realize that, you understand how absurd it is. But there’s always a shot.”
While Tamayo insisted that he has no chance of defending his title, he did bag a healthy 103,700 chips at the end of the day to give him 130 big blinds to play with today.
The other former Main Event champions still in with a shout after Day 1d were Huck Seed with 96 big blinds and Joe McKeehen with 81.
Event #81: $10,000 WSOP Main Event World Championship Day 1d Top Ten Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 1 | Riva Arthur | United States | 401,200 | 502 |
| 2 | Hung-Wei Shiue | Taiwan | 317,000 | 396 |
| 3 | Andrew King | Ireland | 302,400 | 378 |
| 4 | Nan Li | United States | 299,500 | 374 |
| 5 | Romain Locquet | France | 296,000 | 370 |
| 6 | Vytautas Semaska | Lithuania | 290,600 | 363 |
| 7 | San Kim | United States | 283,000 | 354 |
| 8 | Bijan Motamedi | United States | 281,000 | 351 |
| 9 | Jessie Bryant | United States | 275,000 | 344 |
| 10 | Bogdan Chornyy | Ukraine | 271,500 | 339 |
