WSOP 2024: Two Women Still Standing in Endgame of Record-Breaking Main Event

The biggest poker show on the planet is playing into the business end now with six days of action in the books. In addition to a record turnout once again this year, there are other historic things potentially in the works as well.

Among the 59 players left alive in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event are two women, leaving open the historic possibility of the first-ever woman Main Event Champ. Canadian Kristen Foxen is one of two women who bagged up chips at the end of Day 6 while Shundan Xiao is the other with the second-biggest stack in the whole game.

Kevin Davis has the big stack for the final 59 going into Day 7, bagging up 26.25 million, almost 2.5 million more than second-place Xiao. The entire top-ten for Day 7 are all playing at least 17 million.

Main Event Stats and Stacks after Day 6

• Entries: 10,112
• Prizes: $94,041,600
• Winner: $10,000,000
• Final Table: $1,000,000 or more

Record-Breaking Main Nearly Caps $100 Million

There was a time in poker when the highs of the 2005 Main Event, when Jamie Gold bested a record field for the biggest Main Event prize in history, looked to be a relic of the poker boom, never to be seen again. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic came along and nearly put the final nail in the coffin of the game.

For more than a year, live poker ground to a halt and there were questions about whether it would ever recover to anything close to what it was before. But a funny thing happened on the way to the bottom — the industry appeared to get a massive “pandemic boost”.

The first live Main Event back after the pandemic was 2022, and that year showed very positive numbers coming off the hiatus. More than $80 million ended up in the prize pool from more than 8,500 entries in a year where players faced significant travel and life challenges to even get to the games, but it was 2023 that really highlighted the “new poker boom” post-pandemic.

Last year’s Big Show was the one that finally put 2005 to bed as more than 10,000 entries swelled the prizes to more than $93 million. That was a new record and the first time the Main Event field capped 10k entries.

This year proved that 2023 wasn’t just a blip on the radar — it represents a solid trend in the new poker boom. The 2023 record was left in the dust this year with 10,112 entries and a record prize pool of more than $94 million.

There are still 59 players left alive fighting for the huge $10 million first-place prize, and, of course, the most coveted bracelet in the game, and this year has the chance to be historic in more ways than just size.

Second Stack is a Woman

In the 54 previous Main Events here at WSOP, the big prize has always been won by a male player. But with fewer than 60 players left in contention for the 2024 title, the second-biggest stack in the game at the end of Day 6 was Shundan Xiao.

Xiao bagged up just shy of 24 million to end to the day about 2.25 million less than leader Kevin Davis. While she no doubt has bracelets in her dreams lately, she is already living a bit of a dreamlife with her best previous cash less than $10k meaning she’s already guaranteed herself a 10x on her previous best score, with a couple orders of magnitude left to potentially climb.

Xiao isn’t the only woman left in the race. Canadian crusher Kristen Foxen (nee Bicknell) is also still in the mix, and she represents a serious and well-known threat to everyone left in the game. Foxen just missed out on the top ten for Day 6 bagging 14.5 million for the 17th stack in Day 7.

The native of St. Catharines, ON, Foxen is among the top players in the game. She won her first bracelet in the Ladies Event in 2013, but then followed that up three years later with an open bracelet in the 2016 $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Bounty (Event #46).

She added two more bracelets to her collection in later years, and a win here in the Main would bring her total to five. That skill extends beyond the WSOP as well, with Fixen sitting as the top woman earner in Canada and 13th overall on the Canadian poker rankings.

With more than $7.7 million in wins on her Hendon Mob page, Foxen is 213th on the all-time global money list and sits second, behind only the legendary Vanessa Selbst, on the list of global women in the game. She topped the women’s Global Poker Index rankings for 2017 and 2018 after coming second in 2016.

Other Crushers Still Alive

There is a fairly deep field still alive in the Main Event with fewer than 60 remaining. Among the other big names spotted still alive in the late game are Niklas Astedt, Joe Serock, six-time bracelet winner Brian Rast, Garrett Bok, Brandon Cantu, and Stephen Song.

Meanwhile, with six days of action in the books and a five-figure field size, there have also been a lot of players to already cash out for at least 4x their buy-ins from this record-breaking Main including:

There are still four days of Main Event action left on the schedule, and no matter what happens, this is one for the record books. But with two women still standing for Day 7 (one with the second-biggest stack in the room, and the other universally hailed as one of the top players in the game), the 2024 Main Event still has the potential to destroy the record books with the one record everyone has been waiting to fall … the first woman to win the Main Event.

This could be the year.