Bryan Piccioli Leads 38 Remaining Players in 2020 WSOP Online Main Event

There is one day left in the 2020 World Series of Poker Online $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event on GGPoker as just 38 players remain after this past weekend’s Day 2. Leading the way is Bryan Piccioli with 18,417,494 chips.

In my friend Earl Burton’s previous update on the WSOP Online, he said it looked like the $25 million guaranteed prize pool would be hit. And he was right! A total of 5,082 players registered for the tournament, generating a $27,559,500 prize pool. That’s the largest prize pool in online poker history.

Interestingly (or not, depending on how you roll), Piccioli is an American, yet GGPoker does not allow people to play from the United States. Piccioli, like many U.S.-based players, traveled out of the country (usually to Canada or Mexico – Piccioli is in Mexico) to play in the GGPoker side of the WSOP Online. The chip leader normally lives in Las Vegas, where he cashed 14 tournaments in the WSOP.com portion of the 2020 WSOP Online.

This Main Event cash will be his sixth on GGPoker. First prize is an insane $3,904,686.

Piccioli has experience running this deep in the WSOP Main Event. In 2017, he finished sixth in the traditional World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas (Remember that? Thousands of people playing poker in one room?). He also won a bracelet at the WSOP Asia Pacific in 2013 and took down the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star in 2016.

Unlike the usual WSOP Main Event, this one is taking a break for the rest of the week, just as it did before Day 2. The 38 remaining players will return to GGPoker on Saturday, September 5 to duke it out for the bracelet.

The winner, as mentioned, will bank nearly $4 million, as well as a World Series of Poker Europe prize package. Second place will receive about $2.75 million, third place gets $1.93 million, and fourth place will win $1.35 million. Fifth place falls just short of $1 million. The top 17 finishers will all break six figures.

At a minimum, every remaining player will cash for at least $39,214.

And though Piccioli is in the lead, it’s not like he’s running away with it. Sure, he’s about 2.5 million ahead of Michael Kane, but with nearly 16 million chips, Kane doesn’t have to do much to inflict some damage on the chip leader. The top 11 players are all over 10 million chips. Piccioli could be overtaken easily (not that he will – I’m not doubting his poker prowess – I’m just looking at the numbers).

We’ll just have to wait until the weekend to see what happens.