Selbst Shines as Independence Day comes to the Main Event

The third of four starting flights coincided with Independence Day in the USA but still attracted a healthy 1678 entries. It also saw that most terrible of Main Event bustouts…

Aces over Kings

It is one of the most asked Main Event questions among players: you pick up kings on the first hand and someone puts you all-in – what do you do?

That was Thomas Henshaw’s dilemma, although it took until the river before all the chips went in…

Yueqi Zhu: :ax: :ax:

Thomas Henshaw: :kx: :kx:

Flop: 2♥ 6♥ Q♣

Turn: 2♣

River: 6♦

Henshaw shoved and Zhu couldn’t find a reason to fold and that was that – a brutal $10k hole in the pocket but a story to tell the grandkids.

Henshaw was far from the only player to bust in cruel fashion, with Tam Ho’s exit another for the WSOP annals…

Quads on the River

Tam Ho: 8♠ 8♥

Paul Vulpis: 7♠ 7♣

Zack Marshak: :4x: :6x:

Flop: 7♥ 5♣ 8♦

With action before him, Marshak decided his flopped straight was worth a raise but when Ho came over the top with a monster 3-bet shove he decided discretion was the better part of valour.

Vulpis, however, called…

Turn: 7♦

That was a one-outer from space and Ho would need one of his own to survive. It wasn’t destined to be…

River: 3♣

…and Ho hit the rail in dramatic fashion.

Ho was joined by some big names as the day continued…

Busted!

Punnat Punsri

Katie Swift

Dutch Boyd

Julien Martini

Not everyone was having such bad luck though and the winningest woman in poker history, Vanessa Selbst, breezed through to bag a top 100 stack. Selbst wasn’t the only woman in the field though…

Early in the Main Event Day 1C field, we found a poker legend! @WendeenEolis was the very first woman to cash the WSOP Main Event in 1986!

We are excited to see Wendeen in the field and wish her the best of luck!#WSOP2025 pic.twitter.com/DmoAAIwhAb

— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) July 4, 2025

Eolis also found a day 2 bag, though closer to the bottom of the chip counts and will have to work wonders to reach the paid spots again.

There was a slew of big names who made it to the end of the day with chips, among them:

Bagged!

Chris ‘Big Huni’ Hunichen

Viktor Blom

Damian Salas (2020 WSOP ME champ)

Michael Addamo

Erick Lindgren

Freddy Deeb

None of those luminaries of the game came close to matching Andriy Lyubovetskiy’s day-leading 392,400, almost 500 big blinds going into day 2.

Day 1c Top 10 chip counts

Day 1d today is the final starting flight and can be expected to produce a very busy day. For those who bagged days 1a,1b or 1c, play resumes as Day 2ABC on Sunday, while day 1d survivors play a day 2d on Monday.

Those day 2s then combine on Tuesday for day 3 and the battle continues towards crowning a new world champion one week later!

Andrew Burnett

Professional Poker Journalist

An avid poker player, he dreams of one day playing the WSOP Main Event and has promised himself he will fold aces and kings if he gets them on the first hand to avoid front-page headlines. [more]