Cory Blum's $17,500 Résumé Leads Event #91 With 27 Left

Cory Blum's entire poker résumé totals $17,500 in lifetime earnings, zero bracelets, zero rings, and no recorded final tables. That number would barely cover his own buy-in at a $10K event. And right now he has more chips than anyone else at the 2026 WSOP's $1,500 Pick Your PLO.

Blum bagged 690,000 chips as Event #91 broke for the night with 27 players remaining. That's the outright chip lead in an eight-handed PLO field that started the day with some of the most accomplished pot-limit players in the world.

Blum's 690,000 chips are worth roughly 39 times his entire career earnings.

The Names Behind Him

The players who didn't survive to this point tell you how deep Blum has punched above his weight.

Eliahu Elezra, a five-time WSOP bracelet winner with $4.63 million in lifetime cashes and 28 career final tables, busted before the 27-player mark. So did Michael Matusow, who holds four bracelets, $7.33 million in earnings, and 35 final tables across a career that stretches back to the early 2000s.

Elezra and Matusow have a combined nine bracelets and nearly $12 million in tournament winnings between them. Blum has $17,500 and a chip bag that's bigger than both of theirs ever got in this event.

Joseph Ritzie ($79,866 in lifetime cashes, two final tables) also fell short. So did Emory Peebles, whose $1,104 in career earnings makes Blum look like a grinder by comparison.

What Makes This Unusual

Players with sub-$20K résumés don't normally lead WSOP bracelet events at the 27-player stage. PLO in particular tends to concentrate chips among experienced players who've logged thousands of hours in pot-limit formats. The variance is higher than Hold'em, but positional edges and hand-reading advantages compound over long sessions.

Blum has navigated all of that. Two full days of eight-handed PLO against fields that included multiple bracelet holders, and he's not just surviving. He's leading.

It's worth noting what we don't know: Blum's recorded tournament earnings ($17,500) may not reflect his full poker experience. Cash-game players, private-game regulars, and online grinders can carry deep PLO skills that never show up in a Hendon Mob profile. A thin tournament résumé doesn't necessarily mean a thin skill set.

But even granting that caveat, the gap is staggering. Elezra alone has 264 times Blum's lifetime earnings.

What's Next

Event #91 resumes with 27 players and Blum holding the chip lead at 690,000. Every remaining player is guaranteed a cash, but the gap between a min-cash and a bracelet is where careers pivot.

If Blum closes this out, it would be the most lopsided résumé-to-result story of the 2026 WSOP summer: a player whose entire career earnings are less than 1.2% of the buy-in structure Elezra typically plays, winning a gold bracelet in a PLO event.

That's not a typo. That's poker.