Event #1 Still Doesn't Have a Winner

We're eight days into the 2026 World Series of Poker and Event #1 still doesn't have a winner.

The $550 Mini Mystery Millions No-Limit Hold'em — the tournament literally designed to kick off the summer — has run five starting flights, collapsed its Day 2 fields, and is only now reaching its final table. Meanwhile, events numbered well into the double digits have already shipped bracelets, posed for photos, and gone home.

The opening act is outlasting the headliners.

The opening act is outlasting the headliners.

Five Flights Is a Scheduling Choice, Not a Law of Nature

I get the counterargument: more flights mean more entries, more entries mean bigger prizes, bigger prizes mean better marketing. Fine. But when your flagship opener takes longer to resolve than entire subsequent tournaments from registration to trophy, you've stretched the format past the point of coherence.

A five-flight $550 event isn't a tournament. It's a processing queue with a bracelet at the end.

The final table features Nicholas Meno leading with 1,240,000 in chips, followed by Spain's Juan Martin Rodriguez at 930,000 and Neal Anderson at 645,000. None of the finalists have a prior bracelet or ring. This is a table of first-timers — which is exactly the kind of story a $550 event should produce. No complaints there.

The Problem Isn't the Players — It's the Calendar

The WSOP wants Event #1 to feel like a curtain-raiser. Something electric, fast, communal. Instead, the Mini Mystery Millions has become a slow background process running underneath the real schedule. By the time Meno or Rodriguez or anyone at this final table lifts a bracelet, the series will have moved on without them.

Five flights at the $550 level isn't serving the players who showed up on Day 1A. It's serving a field-size number on a press release.

If you want Event #1 to matter as the opening event, it needs to finish before Event #12 does. Otherwise just call it what it is: a month-long side tournament that happens to wear the #1 jersey.