Yenhan Chen Leads $5K Super Turbo Bounty Final Table With Nearly Double the Next Stack

The Stack That Doesn't Match the Résumé

Yenhan Chen has $163,571 in lifetime tournament earnings and 20.1 million chips at the $5,000 Super Turbo Bounty final table. The next-closest stack has roughly half that.

Event #84 of the 2026 World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe/Paris complex reached its final table of eight, and Chen, a Taiwanese player with zero bracelets and zero rings, sat down holding a commanding chip lead. In a format built on aggression, where the super turbo structure compresses decision windows and the bounty element rewards relentless targeting, Chen has somehow accumulated more chips than any other player at two separate milestone counts.

Yenhan Chen has $163,571 in lifetime tournament earnings and 20.1 million chips at the $5,000 Super Turbo Bounty final table.

Who He Beat to Get Here

The path to this chip lead ran through serious competition. At 16 players, three-time bracelet winner Naoya Kihara of Japan sat with 4.04 million chips and $2.81M in career earnings across 11 final tables. Kihara didn't survive to the final eight; he busted in 10th.

Khoi Le Nguyen, a Vietnamese player with one bracelet and $3.29M in lifetime cashes, also fell short. He exited in 9th. Colin Robinson (one bracelet, $2.96M in career earnings, five final tables) was still alive at the two-table redraw but didn't make the final eight either.

That's three players with a combined $9.07M in career earnings and five WSOP bracelets between them. All gone before the official final table. Chen outlasted every one of them.

What the Numbers Say

Chen's $163,571 career total is the kind of figure that barely registers on a WSOP leaderboard. For context, Nicholas Pupillo, who busted before the final table with $408,729 in lifetime earnings and three prior final tables, had nearly 2.5 times Chen's career cashes. Even Pavlo Veksler of Ukraine, who went out in 11th, carried just $13,795 in lifetime earnings, making him the only player at the final two tables with a thinner tournament record than Chen.

The buy-in itself tells a story. At $5,000, this is not a low-stakes side event that draws casual tourists. The field skews toward experienced tournament grinders and bankrolled pros. Chen's chip lead of 20.1 million at a $5K bracelet final table would be noteworthy for any player. For someone whose entire career earnings amount to roughly 33 buy-ins at this level, it borders on extraordinary.

The Bounty Wrinkle

Super turbo bounty formats reward a specific kind of fearlessness. Blinds escalate fast, and every knockout ships a cash bounty to the eliminator. Passive play is punished twice: you bleed chips to the clock AND miss the bounty payouts that pad your bottom line. Chen's 20.1 million stack suggests he hasn't been sitting back and waiting for premium hands.

At the time the final table was set, Daniel Tafur of Spain (lifetime earnings: $156,369) held 600,000 chips at the two-table stage but did not appear among the final eight. That left Chen as the clear table captain heading into what could be the biggest payday of his career by a wide margin.

What a Win Would Mean

A first-place finish in a $5K WSOP event would likely multiply Chen's career earnings several times over. More than the money, a gold bracelet would put a permanent credential next to his name, one that Kihara, Nguyen, and Robinson already hold but couldn't defend at this final table.

The chips say Chen belongs. The résumé says he's never been here before. That gap is what makes this final table worth watching.