Wesley thought he was out of the game in the WSOP Main Event, but he's still alive today.

Wesley Fei thought he was eliminated on Day 3 of the 2026 WSOP Main Event, but found he still had chips and successfully advanced to Day 5. His past feud with Arnaud Mattern also became a topic of discussion.

Wes Side's Wesley Fei thought he was out of the game on Day 3 of the WSOP Main Event. He had lost a big pot and was about to leave when he was called back to the table—because he still had some chips.

This high-stakes Chinese player, known for his appearances on Hustler Casino Live, amassed a small chip stack and successfully advanced to Day 5. Day 5 began at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday with 533 players remaining. He started the stage with slightly below-average chips, holding 44 big blinds. But considering his position two days earlier, he was already quite content.

How did Wesley get here?

Wesley lost a huge pot on Day 3. He started to stand up from his seat, thinking he was out of the game, but that wasn't the case. "I didn't even count my chips," he said. "I saw we were very close."

"I was leaving, getting ready to go," he told PokerNews on his fifth day of rest. "Then someone told me, 'Wait, wait.'"

He wasn't eliminated as he initially expected, as he still had more chips than his opponents. Unfortunately, for this cryptocurrency investor, his chip lead was only slightly greater. Wesley was left with just 15,000 chips, only a quarter of his starting chip stack. And this wasn't even day one—the tournament had already gone through more than ten levels, so he only had three big blinds left.

To make matters worse, his next move was in the big blind, and after throwing an ante, he only had one big blind left behind him.

But as the saying goes, every chip counts. That's exactly what happened for the remainder of that phase. He doubled up, then doubled up again, and then doubled up again. Soon after, he was no longer short-stacked and, entering day four, had a stack above average, just a few places away from the prize.

Wesley experienced another volatile day on Thursday – dropping from an average stack to a short stack, then rebounding strongly before the end of that phase to pack a near-average stack. He increased his stack by approximately 20% in the first level of Day 5, and the prize jump was about to become huge.

Wesley advanced to Day 5 alongside someone he didn't particularly like—Arnaud Mattern, a 2007 PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) champion. The two poker players had previously faced off in high-stakes private games in Southern California, and Wesley referred to Mattern as a "mechanic dealer," accusing him of cheating.

Nik Airball, a regular at Hustler Casino Live, also made similar accusations against Matttern on Twitter in response to a PokerNews article about Matttern winning a crazy hand on the third day.

“He’s a mechanic dealer, that’s a fact,” Wesley said. “He’s cut off his own escape route. He cheats at the casino. He deals cards in the casino to give his friends a royal flush. He’s a mechanic dealer. He has all the skills. If he’s sitting at my table, I’ll be very careful to see if he’s marking the cards.”

Wesley and Matttern are both in the money, and it would be very interesting to see them at the same ESPN table in the later stages of the main event.

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