The Ghost Leading the $10K PLO Championship

A Name Without a File

The chip leader of the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship has no WSOP database footprint whatsoever.

Michael Hahn sits with 2,785,000 chips as Event #70 breaks for the final two tables. Zero bracelets. Zero rings. No lifetime earnings on file. No photo. No Twitter handle. The WSOP's tracking system, which catalogs everyone from first-time $400 grinders to Hall of Famers, has essentially nothing on him.

And he's still alive in a $10,000 championship.

Michael Hahn sits with 2,785,000 chips as Event #70 breaks for the final two tables: zero bracelets, zero rings, no lifetime earnings on file, no photo, no Twitter handle.

The Man With Eight Bracelets Is in the Same Room

Hahn is not the biggest stack. That distinction belongs to Michael Mizrachi, the eight-time bracelet winner with $26 million in lifetime earnings and 38 career final tables, who has surged to 9,150,000 chips after holding 6,700,000 when the field was still at 21 players.

Mizrachi is hunting bracelet number nine. He already owns one ring. He's played more championship final tables than most pros have played championship events. If the narrative gods were writing this tournament, the script would be simple: Grinder closes it out, ties Phil Ivey and Johnny Chan, and the poker world posts the same clip of him fist-pumping at the Rio in 2010.

But PLO doesn't follow scripts. It follows runouts.

Sixteen players remain. Between Hahn and Mizrachi sit several stacks with their own claims to the title. India's Zurvan Tumboli, who has $160,278 in lifetime earnings and one prior final table, leads the entire field at 4,555,000 (update: 4,255,000 at the latest count). Joshua Barney, another player with no recorded earnings in the WSOP system, has built to 3,555,000. Ian Matakis, a one-bracelet, one-ring holder with $2.13 million in career cashes and 16 final tables, holds 2,900,000.

What the Stacks Tell Us

The gap between the two Michaels is significant. Mizrachi's 9,150,000 represents more than three times Hahn's stack. In PLO, where pots routinely bloat to two or three times what they'd be in No-Limit Hold'em, that gap can close in a single hand. It can also widen just as fast.

What's striking about this final sixteen is how few established names populate it. Of the five players the WSOP highlighted at the two-table redraw, three have no bracelets and no rings. Diogo Alexandre Xavier Veiga, a Portuguese player with $61,114 in lifetime earnings and two prior final tables, is grinding a short stack of 605,000. The field's credentialed pros are outnumbered.

Ryan Riess, the 2013 WSOP Main Event champion with $13.28 million in career earnings and 33 final tables, busted in 22nd. He won't be at either of these tables.

The Obstacle

For Hahn, the math is straightforward but the path is not. He needs to navigate a field that includes the most accomplished PLO tournament player of his generation and several other deep stacks held by players with nothing to lose and no reputation to protect.

Mizrachi has been here before: championship final tables, bracelet on the line, entire room watching. Hahn, as far as anyone can tell, has not.

That's either a liability or a weapon. In PLO, where the variance runs hotter and the edges run thinner than in any other major WSOP format, the answer depends entirely on the cards.

Sixteen players. Two tables. One bracelet. And the chip leader is a ghost.