Last Updated on September 5, 2026 by Bala Kumar
There’s a reason poker players talk about “winning the Main Event” the way golfers talk about winning the Masters. It’s not just another tournament, it’s the one result that gets attached to your name permanently, the line that goes at the top of every bio for the rest of your career. Since 1970, only a small handful of people have ever managed to do it, and the list of names reads like a history of the game itself: gunslingers from the Texas road-gambling scene, an accountant who paid $86 to get in, and most recently, a 22-year-old from Spokane who took down the biggest bracelet in poker for $10 million.
Below is the complete, year-by-year record of every WSOP Main Event champion, along with the context that makes the list worth more than just a table of names.
WSOP Main Event Champions, Year by Year (1970-2026)
| Year | Champion | Country | Prize | Entrants |
| 1970 | Johnny Moss | USA | N/A (peer vote) | 7 |
| 1971 | Johnny Moss | USA | N/A | 6 |
| 1972 | Amarillo Slim Preston | USA | $80,000 | 8 |
| 1973 | Puggy Pearson | USA | $130,000 | 13 |
| 1974 | Johnny Moss | USA | $160,000 | 16 |
| 1975 | Sailor Roberts | USA | $210,000 | 21 |
| 1976 | Doyle Brunson | USA | $220,000 | 22 |
| 1977 | Doyle Brunson | USA | $340,000 | 34 |
| 1978 | Bobby Baldwin | USA | $210,000 | 42 |
| 1979 | Hal Fowler | USA | $270,000 | 54 |
| 1980 | Stu Ungar | USA | $385,000 | 73 |
| 1981 | Stu Ungar | USA | $375,000 | 75 |
| 1982 | Jack Straus | USA | $520,000 | 104 |
| 1983 | Tom McEvoy | USA | $540,000 | 108 |
| 1984 | Jack Keller | USA | $660,000 | 132 |
| 1985 | Bill Smith | USA | $700,000 | 140 |
| 1986 | Berry Johnston | USA | $570,000 | 141 |
| 1987 | Johnny Chan | USA | $625,000 | 152 |
| 1988 | Johnny Chan | USA | $700,000 | 167 |
| 1989 | Phil Hellmuth | USA | $755,000 | 178 |
| 1990 | Mansour Matloubi | Wales | $895,000 | 194 |
| 1991 | Brad Daugherty | USA | $1,000,000 | 215 |
| 1992 | Hamid Dastmalchi | USA | $1,000,000 | 201 |
| 1993 | Jim Bechtel | USA | $1,000,000 | 220 |
| 1994 | Russ Hamilton | USA | $1,000,000 | 268 |
| 1995 | Dan Harrington | USA | $1,000,000 | 273 |
| 1996 | Huck Seed | USA | $1,000,000 | 295 |
| 1997 | Stu Ungar | USA | $1,000,000 | 312 |
| 1998 | Scotty Nguyen | USA | $1,000,000 | 350 |
| 1999 | Noel Furlong | Ireland | $1,000,000 | 393 |
| 2000 | Chris Ferguson | USA | $1,500,000 | 512 |
| 2001 | Carlos Mortensen | Spain | $1,500,000 | 613 |
| 2002 | Robert Varkonyi | USA | $2,000,000 | 631 |
| 2003 | Chris Moneymaker | USA | $2,500,000 | 839 |
| 2004 | Greg Raymer | USA | $5,000,000 | 2,576 |
| 2005 | Joe Hachem | Australia | $7,500,000 | 5,619 |
| 2006 | Jamie Gold | USA | $12,000,000 | 8,773 |
| 2007 | Jerry Yang | USA | $8,250,000 | 6,358 |
| 2008 | Peter Eastgate | Denmark | $9,152,416 | 6,844 |
| 2009 | Joe Cada | USA | $8,547,044 | 6,494 |
| 2010 | Johnathan Duhamel | Canada | $8,944,310 | 7,319 |
| 2011 | Pius Heinz | Germany | $8,715,638 | 6,865 |
| 2012 | Greg Merson | USA | $8,531,853 | 6,598 |
| 2013 | Ryan Riess | USA | $8,361,570 | 6,352 |
| 2014 | Martin Jacobson | Sweden | $10,000,000 | 6,683 |
| 2015 | Joe McKeehen | USA | $7,683,346 | 6,420 |
| 2016 | Qui Nguyen | USA | $8,005,310 | 6,737 |
| 2017 | Scott Blumstein | USA | $8,150,000 | 7,221 |
| 2018 | John Cynn | USA | $8,800,000 | 7,874 |
| 2019 | Hossein Ensan | Germany | $10,000,000 | 8,569 |
| 2020 | Damian Salas | Argentina | $1,550,969 | 1,379* |
| 2021 | Koray Aldemir | Germany | $8,000,000 | 6,650 |
| 2022 | Espen Jorstad | Norway | $10,000,000 | 8,663 |
| 2023 | Daniel Weinman | USA | $12,100,000 | 10,043 |
| 2024 | Jonathan Tamayo | USA | $10,000,000 | 10,112 |
| 2025 | Michael Mizrachi | USA | $10,000,000 | 9,735 |
| 2026 | Lucas Jumalon | USA | $10,000,000 | 9,208 |
*The 2020 Main Event was split into an online phase due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Damian Salas winning the live-streamed heads-up finale against Joseph Hebert. Field size reflects that unusual format.
Lucas Jumalon: The Newest Name on the List
The 2026 champion adds one of the more interesting footnotes to this entire list. Lucas Jumalon took down the title for $10,000,000 out of 9,208 entries — the fourth-largest field the Main Event has ever seen — by beating Finland’s Lauri Saaskilahti heads-up. At 22 years old, Jumalon is now the second-youngest champion in Main Event history, trailing only Joe Cada, who won at 21 in 2009. He bagged just 7,400 chips after his opening flight, took over the chip lead with 13 players remaining, and never relinquished it on the way to the title. It’s the kind of run that instantly gets compared to Cada’s and Peter Eastgate’s, the only other players to win the biggest tournament in poker before turning 23.
Michael Mizrachi’s 2025 Run Still Looms Large
The 2025 champion deserves a mention of his own, because his win wasn’t just a Main Event title — it was arguably the single best summer any player has ever had at the WSOP. Michael Mizrachi won the Main Event for $10 million out of 9,735 entries, then turned around and captured his fourth $50,000 Poker Players Championship in the same series, making it the most decorated single WSOP by any player in the event’s history. The Poker Hall of Fame took the unusual step of voting unanimously to bypass its standard nomination process and induct him immediately. That same year, Leo Margets made the final table and finished 7th, becoming only the second woman ever to reach the Main Event’s final table, following Barbara Enright’s run in 1995.
The Records That Define the List
Most Main Event titles: Johnny Moss and Stu Ungar share the record with three wins each. Moss won in 1970, 1971, and 1974, back when fields numbered in the single and double digits. Ungar won in 1980, 1981, and 1997 — a gap of 16 years between his second and third title, and the only three-time championship earned entirely within the modern freeze-out format against increasingly larger fields.
Back-to-back champions: Doyle Brunson (1976-77) and Johnny Chan (1987-88) both won in consecutive years, with Chan the most recent player to pull it off. Nobody has repeated since 1988, and it’s not hard to see why — with fields now regularly exceeding 8,000 entries, winning even once is a combination of skill and considerable variance. Mark Newhouse came the closest to a modern repeat, making the final table in both 2013 and 2014 and finishing 9th both times without ever getting a second title.
Youngest champions: Joe Cada holds the outright record at 21 (2009), ahead of Peter Eastgate at 22 (2008), with Pius Heinz (2011) and now Lucas Jumalon (2026) also winning at 22. Phil Hellmuth held the youngest-champion record for nearly two decades after winning at 24 in 1989, before Eastgate broke it.
The Moneymaker Effect: No single result changed the shape of this list more than 2003. Chris Moneymaker, an amateur accountant, satellited into the Main Event for $86 online and won the whole thing for $2.5 million, beating pro Sam Farha heads-up in his first-ever live tournament. The field jumped from 839 entries that year to 2,576 the next, then to 5,619 by 2005 — a growth curve that reshaped the entire industry and is still referenced today whenever an amateur makes a deep run.
Eight-figure paydays: The Main Event has broken the $10 million first-place mark seven times: 2006, 2014, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 — and the 2026 win adds an eighth. Jamie Gold’s $12,000,000 in 2006 stood as the largest first prize for years before Daniel Weinman’s $12.1 million in 2023 edged it out, both a product of unusually massive fields rather than a change in payout structure.
Why This List Still Matters
What makes this record genuinely interesting isn’t just who won — it’s how differently each era’s champion had to win. Moss and Brunson were beating small groups of professional gamblers who mostly knew each other by reputation. Moneymaker beat a mid-size field that included plenty of pros but also plenty of recreational players riding the first wave of the poker boom. Weinman, Tamayo, Mizrachi, and now Jumalon have all had to survive fields of 9,000 to 10,000-plus entries, grinding through days of play against a talent pool that spans nearly every country with a serious poker scene.
That’s really what the Main Event has become: less a single tournament and more a running census of who the best players in the world are at any given moment, updated once a year, every year, since 1970. Whoever’s name gets added next will be judged against all 57 of the players already on this list — which is exactly what makes the achievement worth chasing in the first place.
FAQs
1. When will the WPT Prime Lodge Championship 2026 take place?
The 2026 WPT Prime Lodge Championship is scheduled for October 8–12, 2026, at The Lodge Card Club in Austin, Texas.
2. What is the buy-in for the WPT Prime Lodge Championship?
The Main Event has a $1,100 buy-in and features a $1 million guaranteed prize pool.
3. How can players qualify for the WPT Prime Lodge Championship?
Players can qualify through WPT Global satellites, with entry levels starting from $1.10, or through ClubWPT.com Passport Qualifiers.
4. How many entries did the 2025 WPT Prime Lodge Championship attract?
The inaugural 2025 event attracted 1,648 entries and generated a $1,598,560 prize pool, exceeding its $1 million guarantee.
5. Who won the 2025 WPT Prime Lodge Championship?
Harvey Castro won the inaugural WPT Prime Lodge Championship in 2025, earning $225,020 for first place.
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