Seven Card Stud Is Dying in Public

Event #6 of the 2026 WSOP — $1,500 Seven Card Stud — hit Day 1 and is already down to 88 players. Eighty-eight. A $1,500 bracelet event at the World Series of Poker, the most prestigious tournament series on Earth, and the field couldn't crack triple digits.

Let that number sit for a second. Random $400 daily tournaments at Resorts World draw more bodies. The Bellagio $5/$10 NLH waitlist on a decent night probably has more names on it.

A $1,500 bracelet event at the World Series of Poker, and the field couldn't crack triple digits.

Who's Still Playing

The survivors include Fu Wong, a grinder with $669K in lifetime cashes and four career final tables, and Jesse Katz, who has $58K in tracked earnings and one final table to his name. Caitlin Comeskey ($52K lifetime) rounds out the recognizable names. No chip counts have been reported yet — the field is still shaking out — but the story here isn't who's leading. It's who didn't show up.

That's the real headline. A $1,500 buy-in is not prohibitive. The WSOP schedule isn't short on days. Seven Card Stud simply does not have a player base anymore. The people who learned poker on Stud in the '80s and '90s are aging out, and nobody under 40 is replacing them. The game isn't on any streaming platform. It's not in any training app. It doesn't exist on the major online sites in any meaningful volume.

The Counter-Argument

Some will say the WSOP owes Stud a bracelet out of respect for the game's history. I get the sentiment — Stud built the house that Hold'em moved into. But preserving a bracelet event as a museum exhibit isn't respect. It's taxidermy. You're not honoring Seven Card Stud by running a tournament that 88 people enter; you're documenting its irrelevance on a public stage.

What This Actually Means

The WSOP adds events every year. The schedule is already bloated. At some point, someone at Caesars will look at Stud's entry numbers next to, say, a $1,500 PLO event that draws 800, and the math will make the decision for them.

I'm not rooting for it. But I'm also not pretending that 88 players in a $1,500 bracelet event is anything other than a eulogy in slow motion.

Fu Wong, Jesse Katz, and the other 86 are playing for a gold bracelet on May 29. They deserve every bit of credit for showing up. Someone should — while there's still an event to show up to.