There was drama and action in five different WSOP bracelet events on Monday as two players found a $1m bounty in the Mystery Millions event, stars such as Brandon Cantu and Scott Seiver got close to winning their next gold and the $10,000 Dealer’s Choice Championship begun.

Brown Bags Lead in Mystery Millions After Bounties Won

Both million-dollar bounties were won in the $1,000-entry Mystery Millions event as Ukraine’s Valentyn Shabelnyk and American player DJ Buckley each won a cool million dollars. The Mystery Millions is the sort of event that footage of which is designed to go viral. After all, how exciting would it be to win $1,000,000 from a $1,000 buy-in without having to go on and win the tournament? It turns out, for both Buckley and Shabelnyk, not that exciting.

To much fanfare and an enthusiastic Jeff Platt at the side of the stage upon which the GGPoker-sponsored bounty chest sat, Shabelnyk was the first to withdraw the slip worth a million bucks and reacted with the kind of shy pride that a schoolchild might if they’d just received a participation award on school sports day. Buckley was a trifle more excited but both men were clearly ‘in the zone’ so much they couldn’t escape it for one moment and returned to the felt.

Both busted, of course, leaving Jake Brown as the chip leader on 76.5 million. There is still a chance that Brown outscores both Shabelnyk and Buckley by winning the top prize of $1m in the tournament proper and as chip leader, this is a distinct possibility. One would imagine that if he does so, it would be hard to be less enthused by the prospect as the two million-dollar bounty winners were earlier today.

Seiver Hunting Bracelet #5 in Omaha Event

Scott Seiver has never won a WSOP bracelet in an Omaha event and the American has four of them. He’ll be keener than ever to take home gold tomorrow when he comes back top of four hopefuls left chasing the Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship title. Seiver has 3.94 million chips, and with Jonathan Cohen on 3.67m, nothing is cut and dried yet.

Calvin Anderson (2.5m) and Paul Zappula (1.69m) will wish to spoil the top two’s private party as Anderson also goes for his fifth WSOP title. Cohen goes for his second while Zappula would become a debut champion.

Just 10 Remain in Hunt for Badugi Gold

Tobias Leknes leads from poker legends in the Badugi event, which saw the Norwegian build up a leading stack of 2,225,000 chips in Event #11. Closesly following Leknes is David Prociak, who showed his PokerStake investors exactly why they should have faith in his ability, piling up 2,175,000 to sit only a tiny bit behind the leader.

Overnight leader Joseph Wagganer made eight place with 540,000 but has work to do if he is to end up with all the chips when the gold is awarded tomorrow.

Zhou Leads 6-Max Fight for Gold

Chinese player Quan Zhou (966,000) leads for stars such as John Gordon (941,000), Michael Miller (867,000), Alex Foxen (533,000), Chance Kornuth (202,000), Landon Tice (133,000), Michael Wang (408,000) and JC Tran (391,000) in the $1,500-entry 6-Max NLHE Event #12.

Players such as former world champions Joe Cada and Ryan Riess, YouTube stars Xuan Liu and Brad Owen, bracelet winners Shannon Shorr and Jeremy Ausmus and the 2004 WSOP Main Event runner-up David Williams all busted on a day where 2,526 players were reduced to just 197 survivors, with a top prize of $439,815 now on the line after the conclusion of Day 1.

Alexander in Charge

George Alexander (277,000) is the man to beat in the $10,000 buy-in Dealer’s Choice Championship, with Erick Lindgren (217,000), Nick Schulman (184,000), Maxx Coleman (179,000), Dan Zack (177,000) Robert Mizrachi (173,000), Phil Ivey (171,500) and Daniel Negreanu (159,500) all inside the top dozen places.

A total of 124 entries led to only 68 players surviving to Day 2, with John ‘World’ Hennigan, the former Poker Players Championship winner Phil Hui and Shaun ‘Team Lucky’ Deeb all exiting on Day 1. Another member of Team Lucky, Matt Glantz (115,500) did survive  and he, along with others such as Anthony Zinno (83,500), will go again tomorrow to play through the money bubble and get closer to the final table.

With thanks to PokerGo for their official WSOP photography. The 2024 World Series of Poker is available to watch exclusively on PokerGO. Subscribe today and watch all the drama play out in Las Vegas!