Chris Hunichen Has $12.7M and 22 Final Tables. Now He Wants the Bracelet.

Chris Hunichen has earned $12.7 million across 22 WSOP final tables, and at 1 a.m. on June 9 he's seated eight-handed at the Horseshoe with a real shot at his first bracelet.

That line reads wrong. Go back and re-read it. Twenty-two final tables. Nearly thirteen million in lifetime tournament cashes. One bracelet? Actually, the WSOP database credits him with one already. But the reputation that precedes Hunichen is that of the perennial near-miss artist, a player whose volume of deep runs has vastly outpaced his hardware. Event #25, the $500 Freezeout No-Limit Hold'em, is the latest chapter.

Twenty-two final tables, $12.7 million in lifetime cashes, and Hunichen sits second in chips with seven opponents left.

The Table

Hunichen's 9,950,000 in chips makes him second of eight. The chip leader is Tianyi Ma, a China-based player with $17,500 in tracked earnings and a stack of 31,750,000. That gap is substantial but not insurmountable. Sam Ruha of New Zealand holds 14,925,000. Jason Hoffman sits on 11,575,000 with just $1,000 in lifetime results on file. Aaron Hendi rounds out the named stacks at 4,275,000.

In other words: Hunichen is the only player at this final table with a significant tournament résumé. His 22 career WSOP final tables dwarf the combined recorded experience of the other seven. If pedigree converted directly into chips, this would already be over.

But pedigree doesn't convert directly into chips. That's the whole point.

The Résumé in Context

Hunichen's $12,748,191 in lifetime earnings places him comfortably among the top 150 all-time tournament earners. The database already shows one bracelet to his name. Yet Hunichen is widely associated with the bracelet-less grinder archetype, the player who accumulates deep runs the way others accumulate bad-beat stories. Whether this second bracelet (or, depending on how you frame the narrative, this validation of the first) materializes will depend on a final table where he enters as the most credentialed player by an enormous margin.

Ma's 31.75 million stack represents roughly 3.2x Hunichen's. Closing that gap requires the kind of late-tournament aggression Hunichen has shown across two decades of high-stakes play.

The Fantasy Angle

For the 25kFantasy community: Hunichen is rostered on "Blades & Shades," Nick G's squad, which now has a locked sweat at an eight-handed WSOP final table. That's a meaningful scoring event regardless of the finish position, and a bracelet win in a field this size would be a significant point spike.

The $500 buy-in makes this an unusual stage for a player of Hunichen's caliber. He typically operates in much higher buy-in territory. But a bracelet from Event #25 would count exactly the same as one from a $10K Championship.

What the Stack Says

Hunichen at 9.95 million needs to navigate three shorter stacks before taking on Ma's lead. The structure favors patience, but patience has never been the problem. Hunichen's career is defined by getting here. The question is whether this particular final table, at this particular hour, ends differently from the others.

Eight players. One bracelet. The most experienced player at the table holds the second-biggest stack.