2020 WSOP Big 50 sets tournament record

The largest tournament in World Series of Poker history concluded this week after a winner was crowned in the record-shattering Big 50.

This year’s online Big 50 was the cheapest buy-in in the history of the WSOP at only $50. Not surprisingly a record number of poker players took their shot at the cheap event, with 44,576 players buying in.

How many players took part in 2020 WSOP Big 50?

That blew away the previous record of 29,306 entries which was set at the $100 Opener Tournament held earlier this year. The record for a live WSOP event is the 2019 Big 50, which had a $500 buy-in and 28,371 entries.

The massive field also meant the $1 million guaranteed prize pool was easily surpassed. The final prize pool came in at $2,050,496. From the field the top 2300 players made the money. The top prize of $122,282 went to Huahuan Feng, who goes by the screen name F7588 online.

It was Feng’s first WSOP win, netting him his first WSOP bracelet, however he had already posted six other cashes in this this online WSOP.

Feng began the nine-player final table as the chip leader and maintained the lead throughout the final. When only two players remained, it came down to Feng and Xue Zhao heads-up. At the outset of heads-up play Feng had a sizable chip lead with 153.9 million chips to Zhao’s 67.8 million.

On the final hand of the tournament Zhao raised on the button preflop. Feng three-bet and Zhao came back at him by going all-in. Feng called and showed Ad-6d while Zhao trailed with Kd-6h. The board ended up Qh-Jh-2d-9s-Jc and Feng won with Ace-high.

For the second place finish Zhao cashed $159,705.