Bringing The Payne: Only 49 Players Left After Day 6 of 2023 WSOP Main Event

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Jul 13, 2023 4 min read

Only 49 hopefuls remain from a record-breaking field of 10,043 players in Event #76: $10,000 WSOP Main Event World Championship at the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) after another five levels of play on a Day 6 marked by bad beats and the dropping of big names.

Leading the way is Joshua Payne with a stack of 47,950,000 after a late-night surge that included felting Day 5 chip leader Zachary Hall. The 23-year-old, who played much of the day in a pair of sleek cyborg sunglasses, is after just his third WSOP cash, including a 553rd-place finish in last year's Main Event for $25,500.

End of Day 6 Top 10 Chip Counts

Next in line is Spain's Juan Maceiras Lapido, who is looking to add to his $1.1 million in live earnings and to improve on a fifth-place finish in the 2011 European Poker Tour (EPT) Madrid Grand Final that brought him a career-best $467,532. A result of 13th place or better will do that for him.

Others toward the top of the counts include Conscious Poker founder Alec Torelli (21,075,000) include Daniel Scroggins (20,800,000), who mentioned on Day 5 that he was wearing a watch worth somewhere around $150,000. The Kentuckian would be able to buy another 80 of those watches should he win the record-breaking $12,100,000 first-place prize.

Other's still alive in the biggest WSOP Main Event in history include popular Japanese poker vlogger Masato Yokosawa, esteemed British pro Toby Lewis, and bracelet winner and World Poker Tour (WPT) Champions Club member Daniel Weinman, who took a break from the action to pose with his friend Josh Arieh as he won his second bracelet of the series across the room.

Rigby's Reign Ends, Last Two Women Standing Depart

With several short stacks among the 149 players who started the day, it didn't take long for the eliminations to pile up and for tables to break inside the energetic and relatively packed Horseshoe Event Center.

Among the first to exit on Day 6 were France's Lorenzo Santos Rodriguez (149th - $67,700), Americans David Mzareulov (147th - $67,700) and Tony Dam (144th - $67,700) and Day 1a chip leader Yehuda Dayan (135th - $67,700).

Another Day 1 chip leader, Nicholas Rigby, who has been a prime source of entertainment throughout each day of action, had his second deep WSOP Main Event reach an end as he took a tough beat on a feature table.

The "Dirty Diaper" lover found himself all in and at risk with jacks against the Big Slick of Diego D'Aquilio, a classic flip as the flop landed 10♥J♣2♠ to give Rigby a big lead with top set. But as fate would have it, the board finished out 6sqs] and D'Aquilio spiked the four-outer on the river to end Rigby's reign of terror.

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Yet another chip leader had a no-good Day 6. Day 5 chip leader Hall had a tumultuous day that included jamming into a set to double up Torelli. Hall spent the rest of the night short and was eliminated shortly after the floor announced the final four hands.

Meanwhile, statistician Nate Silver, the highest-profile player in the Day 6 field, lost a sick one that no pollster could have predicted when his set of sixes was pipped by Henry Chan's set of sevens.

Popular players taking beats was a familiar storyline on Day 6. Renowned WPT commentator Tony Dunst spent most of the day under the feature table cameras until he was shown the lights by Andrew Hulme, who managed to river a straight flush to crush the regular straight of Dunst.

There was plenty of attention on the last two women in the field, India's Nikita Luther and France's Estelle Cohuet. Luther, a bracelet winner who took down 2018's Tag Team event, bowed out in 96th place to win $78,900 and confirm Cohuet's title as the last woman standing.

The Winamax pro laddered a bit before getting all in with king-ten and failing to improve against the ace-queen of Raj Vohra. The 68th-place finish brought Cohuet a career-best $130,300 in what she told PokerNews was her first WSOP Main Event.

Others who fell late in the day include 2010 Main Event runner-up John Racener (53rd - $188,400), Allen Chang (56th - $156,100), James Jeffrey (60th - $156,100) and Andrew Dea (62nd - $156,100)

Day 7 of the Main Event is slated to kick off Thursday at noon local time as it moves closer to a winner. The plan is to play another five levels, each slated for two hours in duration and a 75-minute dinner break after Level 3.

Stay with the PokerNews live reporting team tomorrow and the rest of the tournament as the record-breaking Main Event inches closer to crowning a champion.

Connor Richards is an Editor & Live Reporter for PokerNews and host of the Life Outside Poker podcast. Connor has been nominated for two Global Poker Awards for his writing.

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• Tags WSOp23 Alec Torelli Andrew Hulme Daniel Scroggins Daniel Weinman Estelle Cohuet James Jeffrey John Racener Josh Arieh Joshua Payne Tim Van Loo Raj Vohra Nikita Luther Nicholas Rigby Nicholas Gerrity Nate Silver Masato Yokosawa Zachary Hall
• Related Players John RacenerJosh AriehAlec TorelliDaniel WeinmanRaj VohraAndrew Hulme