Four Left, Three Seats: The $135 Mega Satellite Bubble Is Live

Four players, three $10,000 seats, one bust — the $135 Landmark Mega Satellite at the Horseshoe just hit its cruelest moment.

Event #418 started with a full field and is now down to its final four. Three of them will walk away with a seat worth 74× their buy-in. The fourth gets a story about the one that got away.

Who's Still Alive

The final four is genuinely international. Yuki Ando from Japan — who was among the chip leaders when the field was still at 52 with 22,000 chips — has ground through the entire satellite. Phillip Teel, the most credentialed player at the table with one WSOP Circuit ring, six career final tables, and $79,921 in lifetime earnings, brings the only real tournament résumé to the bubble. SK Poker from India and James Marshall from Great Britain round out the quartet.

Three of them will walk away with a seat worth 74× their buy-in — the fourth gets a story about the one that got away.

Why This Matters at 3 A.M.

Mega satellite bubbles compress hours of poker into a few agonizing hands. Nobody wants to play a pot. Every open-fold feels correct and cowardly at the same time. The math is simple and brutal: survive one more elimination and you've converted $135 into $10,000.

Teel is the player with the most to protect — or the most experience protecting it. His ring and six final tables suggest he's been in high-pressure spots before. For Ando, Marshall, and SK Poker, this may be the biggest equity swing of their poker lives.

The field collapsed from 52 to four in about an hour. Now the last four could take longer than the previous 48 combined.

Stream coverage is live from the Horseshoe. No confirmed end time — this one ends when someone busts.