Michael Gagliano Reaches WSOP Main Event Final Table With 46.5 Million Chips
The Rockaway poker pro is fifth of nine, already locked into $1 million, and will play for the $10 million top prize in Las Vegas.
Michael Gagliano of Rockaway will return to the WSOP Main Event final table next week with 46.5 million chips, good for fifth place among the nine remaining players. He is already guaranteed at least $1 million and will play for the $10 million top prize when the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em championship resumes in Las Vegas on Aug. 3-5.
The 41-year-old has been through this grind before. This is his 17th Main Event, and he said that before last year’s 148th-place finish he had only one cash and no Day 4 finishes in the event. He also has coached poker at Gags30Poker since 2010.
His run to the final table was a long one. He bought in for $10,000 and started Day 1b with 60,000 chips, then bagged 93,000 to finish 250th out of 759 entrants. He had 135,000 after Day 2abc, then slipped to 300,000 chips, or 12 big blinds, going into Day 5.
The climb got much steeper after that. He finished Day 5 with 5,215,000 chips, which put him 29th among 174 survivors. Later in the event, he doubled through Shaun Deeb with pocket tens to reach 29.2 million, then took the chip lead when pocket kings held against Hossein Ensan’s ace-queen.
Gagliano later crossed the 100 million mark and sent Antonio Galiana out in 12th place. He then lost 26.5 million chips to Greg Mueller in an ace-king-versus-queens hand before Malcolm Trayner busted in 10th, leaving Gagliano with 46.5 million and fifth place at the restart.
Only two of the nine finalists came from the 9,208-player field as bracelet winners. Coverage on Gagliano’s own WSOP hardware was not fully consistent: Poker.org described him as a three-bracelet winner, while Card Player said he has four WSOP bracelets in no-limit hold’em, including a 2016 $2,500 event that paid $448,463 and later titles in 2022, 2023 and an online mystery bounty event whose results were not yet posted.
That Main Event stage still means a lot to him. He told reporters he grew up watching the tournament on ESPN and called the chance to play it a dream. The first two nights of final-table action air at 9 p.m. on ESPN2, and the finale airs at 10:30 p.m. on ESPN.
