Joe McKeehen Leads Decorated Field into Day 3 of the $10,000 Limit Hold'em Championship

Day 2 of Event #22: $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship has come to an end at the 2023 World Series of Poker over at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas and 2015 Main Event champion Joe McKeehen leads a returning field of 14 players into the Day 3 finale.

The tournament drew 134 entries for a prize pool of $1,246,200, including 30 players that jumped in on Day 2 for late registration. The final 14 will return on Saturday at 1 p.m.

McKeehen jumped ahead and held the chip lead for most of the day. He is one of two players that bagged over 1,000,000 chips, the other being 2021 WSOP Player of the Year Josh Arieh. Nick Schulman finished the day in third, while Yong Wang and Kevin Song rounded out the top five. Schulman has the opportunity to make a run at his second bracelet of the summer after his win in the $1,500 Seven Card Stud event last week.

Day 3 Seat Draw

Table	Seat	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
Feature 1	1
Feature 1	2	Robert Como	United States	250,000	13
Feature 1	3	Nick Schulman	United States	905,000	45
Feature 1	4	Motoyoshi Okamura	Japan	385,000	19
Feature 1	5	Joe McKeehen	United States	1,445,000	72
Feature 1	6	Louis Hillman	United States	255,000	13
Feature 1	7	Ben Yu	United States	420,000	21
Feature 1	8	Nozomu Shimizu	Japan	255,000	13

Feature 2	1	Ronnie Bardah	United States	475,000	24
Feature 2	2	Kevin Song	United States	685,000	34
Feature 2	3	Daniel Idema	Canada	600,000	30
Feature 2	4
Feature 2	5	Yong Wang	China	700,000	35
Feature 2	6	Joseph Beasy	United States	515,000	26
Feature 2	7	Nick Pupillo	United States	620,000	31
Feature 2	8	Josh Arieh	United States	1,170,000	59

Day 2 Highlights

A bumper crop of 30 players turned out for a fresh stack with late registration open until the beginning of Day 2. Among them were Dylan Smith, Paul Volpe, Yueqi “Rich” Zhu, Jake Schwartz, Joao Simao, Ben Lamb, Daniel Negreanu and back-to-back Dealer’s Choice bracelet winner Chad Eveslage. Many of the late entries fell early, but Schulman and four-time bracelet winner Ben Yu were able to spin it up and find a bag for Day 3.

Three-time bracelet winner Daniel Idema qualified for the Day 3 finale. This is Idema’s first WSOP cash since 2019 when he cashed three times during that series. Idema’s most recent bracelet was in the 2015 $3,000 H.O.R.S.E. event, a year where he nearly won two titles after a deep run to third place in the $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8-or-Better event. His other two titles came in the 2013 $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo event and in the 2011 $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship.

Also bagging for Day 3 was Ronnie Bardah. Bardah is a previous bracelet winner in the 2012 $2,500 Limit Hold’em event. Yu returns with the opportunity to pick up bracelet number five after a near miss in this year’s $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship. He won this event in 2015 and he won the six-handed edition in 2021. The other returning bracelet winner is Motoyoshi Okamura. Okamura won the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em/Pot Limit Omaha mixed event in 2021.

Others returning for the Day 3 finale include Nick Pupillo, Joseph Beasy, Louis Hillman, and Robert Como.

Players will return in Level 18 with blinds at 10,000/20,000 and limits of 20,000/40,000. The plan is to play down to a televised final table where the winner will be crowned on PokerGO.