The worst finish available at this final table pays $491,676. That is the floor as the WSOP Online Main Event — Event #28 of the series — comes down to nine players, after closing registration with 6,008 entries at $5,000 apiece and a prize pool of $28,538,000, three and a half million above the $25,000,000 guarantee.
The facts: nine players, six seven-figure payouts
The winner takes $3,931,259 plus a $30,000 Super Pass into the WSOP Paradise Super Main Event. Second is worth $3,030,486 and third $2,336,938; below that, $1,802,141, $1,389,754 and $1,071,761 round out the million-dollar scores, while the bottom three seats pay $826,555, $637,476 and $491,676.
The chip counts have Andrii Novak (Ukraine) in front with 86,787,252, ahead of Germany's Simon Beckmann on 70,950,594 and Brazil's Pablo Brito on 45,738,992. Behind them sit Pavlo Yakovliev, Fernando Liano, Arian Hassankashani, Yury Nadinsky, Charles La Boissonniere and Moyan Chen, the short stack with 17,683,391.
Play resumes at 400,000/800,000 with a 100,000 ante. In practical terms, the table averages roughly 50 big blinds, the leader holds about 108 and the shortest arrives with 22. Three more Brazilians fell before the cut — Ciro Gomes ($154,202), Guilherme Biazutti and Fernando Neto ($113,378 each).
Why it matters: the pay jump picks your hands, not your hand
The winner collects eight times what ninth place collects. That curve is the whole of ICM: at a final table shaped like this, a chip you win is worth less than a chip you lose, and the range you can profitably shove shrinks far more than raw equity math suggests.
The interesting part is who it hits hardest. It is not the 22-big-blind short stack. It is the middle stack with two shorter players still alive, because every hand he plays risks pay jumps the short stack has nothing to lose by attacking. That is the spot that shows up at every final table — and the one most often played on autopilot, because instinct says "put the chips to work" exactly when the structure says wait.
Scale it down to a $20 tournament and nothing changes but the zeros: when the pay jumps are large relative to your stack, your job stops being accumulation and becomes outlasting the other short stacks. Final table strategy is one of the highest-yield things you can study, precisely because those are the hands that move the most money across a whole season.
Today tells us whether the trophy and the pass stay in Brazil. Either way, a final table is still the best free study material there is — we will be watching it hand by hand over in the club.