Nick Schulman Is 16 Players From Bracelet No. 9

Nick Schulman has eight gold bracelets, $11.1 million in career earnings, and 46 WSOP final tables on his résumé. As Day 2 of Event #64, the $25,000 High Roller PLO/NLH Mixed, ground into the early hours of June 25 at the Horseshoe, he was one of 16 players still alive. Bracelet No. 9 is right there.

The field has collapsed to two tables. Schulman isn't the chip leader. He's not even close. But he's Nick Schulman, and anyone who has watched him navigate a final table knows that stack size tells maybe half the story.

Schulman has eight gold bracelets, $11.1 million in career earnings, and 46 WSOP final tables on his résumé.

The Table Around Him

The current chip leader is Edward Leonard, who has built a tower of 2,060,000. Leonard is a two-time WSOPC ring winner with $429K in lifetime earnings and, notably, 46 career WSOP final tables of his own. That last number isn't a typo. Leonard has been at this as many times as Schulman. The difference: Leonard has zero bracelets. Schulman has eight.

Behind Leonard sits Amit Benyacov of Israel with 1,135,000. Benyacov has just one career final table and $212K in lifetime cashes. This is new territory for him. Everything from here is a personal best.

Dominykas Karmazinas of Lithuania holds 1,085,000. His $1.34 million in lifetime earnings and two final tables mark him as a credible threat, but he's never won WSOP hardware. Neither has Spain's Sergio Martinez Gonzalez, who sits at 750,000 with $1.12 million lifetime and two final tables.

Four of the five named stacks belong to players hunting their first bracelet. Schulman is the only multi-bracelet winner among them.

What Makes This Event Different

The $25K High Roller PLO/NLH Mixed isn't a standard no-limit hold'em grind. The format alternates between pot-limit Omaha and no-limit hold'em, and the rotation rewards versatility over volume. You can't just wait for aces. The PLO rounds punish tight play, and the NLH rounds punish loose play. A player needs to shift gears constantly, reading not just opponents but the rhythm of the game itself.

That's the kind of environment where experience compounds. Schulman's 46 final tables represent thousands of hours under exactly this pressure: short-handed, high-stakes, mixed-format poker where every decision carries five-figure consequences.

The Math of Nine

Eight bracelets already places Schulman in elite company. Only a handful of players in WSOP history have reached that number. A ninth would push him further into a tier populated by names that get mentioned in all-time debates.

But between Schulman and that ninth bracelet stand 15 opponents, at least two of whom (Leonard and Karmazinas) have the chips and the résumés to make a deep fight of it. Leonard's stack is the biggest at the table, and his 46 final tables suggest he knows exactly how to deploy it.

The counter-argument: Leonard has converted zero of those 46 into bracelets. Schulman has converted eight.

What Happens Next

Day 2 will play down toward a final table. With 16 remaining and the money line already cleared, every elimination reshuffles the dynamics. Schulman doesn't need to be the chip leader right now. He needs to be the last one standing.

He's done it eight times before. The Horseshoe has seen his name engraved on plenty of bracelets. Whether it happens a ninth time depends on what unfolds over the next several hours of alternating PLO and NLH. The chips say Leonard is in control. The history says don't count out Schulman.