Maksim Pisarenko Leads the $10K Stud Championship — and His Resume Says He Belongs

Maksim Pisarenko has one bracelet, one Circuit ring, eight career final tables, and $1.49 million in lifetime earnings — and right now he leads the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship with 429,000 chips and 26 players left.

The $10K Stud Championship is the kind of event most poker fans scroll past. No Twitch overlay, no GTO solver discourse, no viral clip potential. It's a game where hand-reading is feel, not frequency, and the field self-selects for players who've been studying board texture since before solvers existed.

Pisarenko fits that mold exactly.

The Resume

The numbers tell a clean story. Pisarenko, who hails from Russia, has compiled $1,494,931 in lifetime tournament earnings across eight career final tables. He already owns one WSOP gold bracelet and one WSOP Circuit ring — a combination that signals range across formats and buy-in levels.

Pisarenko has compiled $1,494,931 in lifetime tournament earnings across eight career final tables — and he's sitting on 429,000 chips with 26 players left in the $10K Stud Championship.

That résumé won't make a highlight reel. But it's the profile of a player who converts deep runs into titles, not someone who stumbles into final tables on volume alone. Eight final tables yielding a bracelet and a ring is an efficient hit rate.

The Field Around Him

Pisarenko's 429,000-chip stack gives him a comfortable lead heading into the next session of Event #23 at the 2026 World Series of Poker at Horseshoe/Paris Las Vegas. But the remaining 26-player field isn't soft.

Michael Mizrachi sits second among the notable stacks with 178,000 chips. Mizrachi — eight bracelets, one ring, 32 career final tables, $23.18 million in lifetime earnings — is one of the most decorated mixed-game players in WSOP history. If Pisarenko is the quiet grinder the mainstream ignores, Mizrachi is the mainstream, a player whose name alone changes the weight of a final table.

The gap between them is significant: Pisarenko holds roughly 2.4x Mizrachi's stack. In Stud, where antes and bring-ins create constant pressure and big pots develop over multiple streets, that cushion matters. But 26 players is a long way from heads-up.

Among the recent eliminations: Jerry Wong, a one-bracelet, one-ring player with $4.05 million in lifetime earnings and 20 career final tables, busted on the bubble of the money or just outside it. Wong's exit is a reminder of the caliber this event attracts — and devours.

Why This Matters

The $10K Stud Championship is one of the few remaining WSOP events where the field is almost entirely composed of players who chose to be there because they believe they have an edge in the specific game. There's no "I'll take a shot" energy at this buy-in in this format.

Pisarenko's position at the top of it isn't a fluke. His career arc — modest lifetime earnings by high-roller standards, but a bracelet and a ring to show for his final-table appearances — is the profile of a specialist. He grinds events the mainstream ignores, and he converts when he gets deep.

A second bracelet would push his lifetime earnings past $1.5 million and, more importantly, would stamp him as a repeat champion in one of the WSOP's most skill-intensive formats. At 429,000 chips with 26 players remaining, he's in position to do exactly that.

The $10K Stud Championship doesn't trend on poker Twitter. But the player leading it has the résumé to back up the stack.