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• Upeshka De Silva Poker
• Upeshka De Silva Poker

The 2020 World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 Main Event on WSOP.com proved to be a big affair as 705 players spread out between Nevada and New Jersey competed for the prestigious title. Along with the international portion’s 674 runners on GGPoker (over three starting flights), the 2020 WSOP Main Event reached 1,379 combined players.

Tags: live poker, Upeshka De Silva, world series of poker, WSOP, wsop main event. Day 1 of the most prestigious WSOP Main Event since well, summer, has arrived and despite there being nowhere. Upeshka De Silva won his third bracelet after coming out on top of the $600 WSOP.com Online No Limit Hold’em Knockout Bounty event to win a $98,262 first place prize in the 11-hour tournament. In addition to his first-place winnings, he also earned 18 $100 bounties to put him over $100,000 in total prizes.

For the domestic portion on WSOP.com, the top 107 finishers were slated to make the money, with the eventual winner slated to take home $1,553,256. The runner-up will also become a poker millionaire as $1,002,340 is set aside for second place.

The total prize pool of $6,768,000 is a new record for regulated U.S. online poker. It's also the first time a player will be able to win a seven-figure prize on a U.S. licensed site. Not only that, but the winner will also face the winner over at the international side in a heads-up showdown scheduled for December 30 in Las Vegas to play for an additional $1,000,000.

Don't miss blow-by-blow coverage of the 2020 WSOP Main Event on WSOP.com!

After 12 hours, the field was whittled down to 71 players with three-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Upeshka 'gomezhamburg' De Silva and his stack of 1,930,067 leading the way.

Ten other players bagged seven-figure stacks including Taylor “zeroto100” Von Kriegenbergh (1,518,393), Michael “vagab0nd” Youngman (1,421,443), Galen “turkmalloy” Hall (1,271,362), and Keith “T1mB3y_B33f” Donovan (1,255,452).

2020 WSOP Main Event on WSOP.com Day 1 Chip Counts

Others to punch their ticket to Day 2 were Mohsin “bubbletea3” Charania (777,260), Jason “haderade” Somerville (692,314), Darren “darrenelias” Elias (632,176), Nick “CashUsKlay” Schulman (585,012), Dan “pepperprince” Zack (420,146), Ryan “Protential” Laplante (391,535), Maria “femmeonfelt” Ho (342,441), Freddy “nevera” Deeb (272,539), and 2013 WSOP Main Event champ Ryan “BiTC0iN” Riess (288,474),

Some players to make the money but fail to survive the day were Michael “miguelfiesta” Lech (74th - $15,566), Dan “FeeltheFlow” Sindelar (81st - $15,566), Lauren “sycamore22” Roberts (88th - $15,566), Daniel “DNegs” Negreanu (92nd - $14,890), Matt “Nitr0” Affleck (97th - $14,890), and Ian “APokerJoker2” Steinman (105th - $14,890). For Negreanu, it was his 35th WSOP cash of the year after a summer chock-full of cashes.

Hellmuth, Galfond Among Eliminations

Among those to compete in the tournament but fall short of the money were Phil “Lumestackin” Hellmuth, Phil “heyguys” Galfond, Chris “robotbob47” Moorman, Faraz “22nevaloose” Jaka, Connor “666666” Drinan, Ryan “Joeyisamush” Depaulo, Mike “Mouth123' Matusow and Nahrain “2Rivers” Tamero, who you might recall won the WSOP.com Championship event over the summer.

Another player to leave empty-handed by just one spot was bubble boy Adrian “ParTee” Buckley, who busted in a gut-wrenching manner. In Level 21 (6,000/12,000/1,200), 'Samthedog76' raised to 32,000 under the gun and called with ace-king when Buckley, a WSOP bracelet winner, moved all in for 154,716 from the hijack holding pocket queens.

It was a flip with Buckley looking to hold to avoid becoming the bubble boy. While he was able to dodge all the kings and aces, the board ran out to put quads on the board. That meant Buckley's flopped full house was no good and that the ace kicked of 'Samthedog76' made the difference.

2020 WSOP Main Event WSOP.com Final Table Payouts

Action will resume at Noon PST on Tuesday, and PokerNews will once again bring you live updates until the final table is set. There will also a be a live stream of the action at twitch.tv/pokernews. Be sure to join us then to see who plays their way to the final nine!

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  Upeshka De Silva

Fedor Holz is one of the true shooting stars of poker.

The 21-year-old German played in the WSOP for the first time this year and he immediately made a deep run in the most hallowed poker tournament of all, the Main Event.

Still, not everything went the way he planned.

Holz finished in 25th place but the kid known as “CrownUpGuy” showed some poker skills that excited not only the TV commentators, Norman Chad and Lon McEachern, but millions of viewers around the world.

In our hand of the week he tried pull off a bluff that got sniffed out and snuffed out.

Flop to River

It’s Day 5 of the 2015 WSOP Main Event and the blinds are 20,000/40,000/5000. It’s folded to Holz who raises to 90,000 with 8877

Everyone folds except Upeshka de Silva in the big blind. He holds AAKK and re-raises to 265,000.

At this point Holz has his opponent covered with 2.9 million vs 1.9 million. He calls the re-raise and there's 590,000 in the pot. The flop is AAJJ88

de Silva leads with a bet of 345,000 which Holz calls after some quick deliberation. There's 1.28 million in the pot and de Silva has about 1.3 million left.

The turn is the QQ

Now de Silva checks and Holz bets 425,000. de Silva calls and there's now 2.13 million in the pot. De Silva has about 800,000 left.

The river is the 99

de Silva checks again and Holz puts him all-in. de Silva takes several minutes to make a decision but he eventually calls and wins the pot.

Hand Analysis

It’s an impressive call by the American, who also won a bracelet this year in Event #45. Let’s try and figure out what both players were thinking during this hand.

Pre-flop Holz raises with a speculative hand and de Silva responds from the big blind. With A-K de Silva would probably like to get his chips in the middle pre-flop but Holz only has 8-7s.

There are probably not a lot of weaker hands that Holz would call the re-raise with. The only advantage of his hand is that he usually has two live cards, unless he’s up against an overpair.

And, of course, Holz is in position. On the flop A♦J♦8♥, de Silva obviously c-bets as he usually has the best hand here. Holz could just fold now but instead he’s figuring out a cunning plan. He has both real outs and pseudo-outs.

The real outs are (almost 100% sure) the two eights and three sevens still in the deck, but the pseudo-outs are actually a lot more interesting. These are all the diamonds, queens and nines. Maybe even the kings.

Any of these cards would give Holz the chance to steal the pot. There's also the possibility that de Silva bluffs.

Holz Goes Into Steal Mode

The Q♥ is indeed a card de Silva doesn’t like to see on the turn. He now checks, which means he’s narrowing his range by a lot.Play with Fedor Now!

Excepting bluffs, de Silva’s range now has pretty much just A-K and K-K in it because hands like A-A, Q-Q, J-J and A-Q (which would be re-raising hands pre-flop) would probably just go all-in.

Holz realizes this immediately and goes into steal mode, using his pseudo-outs. He bets 425,000 and basically already announces an all-in on the river.

He also generates very good pot odds for himself as this bet only has to win the pot one in four times to be profitable.

But de Silva refuses to let go as he still has an inside draw to the nuts and knows his opponent might be bluffing or semi-bluffing.

Holz Pulls the Trigger

The 9♦ on the river is the perfect card for Holz. de Silva checks again and Holz pulls the trigger.

He bets 800,000 which is enough to put his opponent all-in. From de Silva’s point of view the board could have hardly developed any worse. Not only does his top pair look like it’s not worth anything anymore but his tournament is also on the line.

The American took almost 10 minutes before he was finally able to make himself call with A-K, which is probably the hand Holz expected. de Silva took down the pot and doubled up.

Pot odds of 4 to 1 and Holz’s aggressive game might both have been factors for this decision. But Holz’s range also has a lot of legitimate hands in it that would not only crush de Silva’s hand but would also still bet all the way -- like all the sets, flushes and straights.

Upeshka De Silva Poker

de Silva was right to call, but Holz played the hand perfectly.

Conclusion

Fedor Holz puts his opponent to the test and applies a high level of aggression that requires great hand analysis.

There are not a lot of players who would have called that river.

Upeshka De Silva Poker

Upeshka de Silva finds a fantastic call on a gruesome board and wins a huge pot that brought him many spots deeper into the Main Event.