Lucas Jumalon ended the first night of the World Series of Poker main event final table in control, finishing with 212 million chips and seven players still in the hunt for the $10 million grand prize. The 22-year-old from Spokane had entered Monday night with 35% of the chips in play and still held the lead when the cards stopped after six hours.
That position was a long way from July 4, when Jumalon sat with the second-shortest stack among 759 players chasing the top prize. By the time the final table opened, he had turned that survival act into a command of the table, carrying a 115 million chip lead over second place at the start of the night and taking his seat after high-fiving supporters and rubbing his father Butch's bald head for luck.
The number that matters most now is not just the lead, but how it shifted. Han Feng went from dead last to second place, yet still trailed Jumalon by 100 million chips. That means Jumalon ended the night with about 56.8% of the chips among the seven remaining players, while Feng held roughly 30.1%. At 9 p.m., Jumalon had given back 27.5 million chips from his starting stack for the night, a wobble that briefly narrowed his cushion before he won a couple of big pots and climbed back to 218.5 million before settling at 212 million by the end.
The night also thinned the table in quick order. Evagoras Evagorou was the first player out around 7:40 p.m., after Jamie Shaevel beat him with a pair of aces against a pair of jacks. Later, Marios Boos lost his pocket eights to Lauri Saaskilahti's king-nine and finished eighth for $1,250,000. The final table now has four Americans, two Canadians, one Frenchman, one Finn and one man from Cyprus, and it will resume with Jumalon as the clear player to catch.
For Jumalon, the next session is the one that decides whether a runaway stack becomes a title. He has already shown he can absorb a heavy swing and still finish on top, and the only question left is whether seven players can find a way to break the grip he had when play ended Monday night.
