Final table set for WSOP Main Event
Legends fall as Generation Z controls poker's biggest event
A Poker Hall of Famer, a future Hall of Famer, and a WSOP Main Event Champion are among the final 21 players of poker’s most celebrated event. Which one of them makes the final table?
Yeah, it’s a trick question. None of them do, because…poker.
A mere 24 hours ago, Todd Brunson, Shaun Deeb, and 2019 WSOP champ Hossein Ensan were part of the final 21 players vying for a spot at the nine-handed WSOP Main Event final table. None of them made it.
For people looking for a familiar poker bedtime story, it was a shock. For people looking for a tale they haven’t heard? Well, it begins like this:
Once upon a time there was a kid named Lucas…
If you cover poker long enough, you’ll learn one thing: no matter how many superstars you think are going to win, somebody new will step up and say, “Excuse me. It’s my turn.” At the WSOP Main Event, that was a young man named Lucas Jumalon.
Lucas Jumalon has a substantial chip lead over the rest of the field, but he has veteran crushers and bracelet winners ready to battle when the Main Event resumes on August 3. Here’s a look at the WSOP Main Event final table.
Those stories tell you all you need to know about the final nine in the Main Event, but if you want a quick look back at everything that happened to get there, check out our Instant News feed.
Doyle Brunson won the WSOP Main Event exactly 50 years ago. His son Todd was still in the 2026 Main Event with 20 players remaining. It had the potential to be one of the greatest poker stories ever told. But, pocket aces suck.
Will Givens did not make the final table of the WSOP, and regardless of how you feel about him as a player, please take a moment to watch one of the single greatest live interviews in the history of poker, executed on the fly while walking across a giant ballroom with one of the most unpredictable players in this year’s Main Event. Perfect execution by Jeff Platt and his team.
Oh, and if you missed it, the WSOP solved a stalling problem during the Main Event by snap-instituting an unprecedented shot clock in the middle of the event. The reaction was…well, it was this from the masses.
Almost lost in everything that happened above: there was a real chance Michael Mizrachi would go back-to-back in the WSOP Main Event. That really got closer to happening than anyone might have predicted.
And hey, while we’re talking about almost impossible things, how about this one? Couple honeymoons in Vegas, plays the WSOP Main Event together, and both wife and husband make the money. That’s how you stay married forever, folks.
We still don’t know, but we’re still asking the question: did Phil Hellmuth accidentally-on-purpose leak some information about the upcoming Poker Hall of Fame inductees?
And we still don’t know, but is Bryn Kenney telegraphing something he knows that we don’t about the results of the Hall of Fame vote? Because Kenney’s saying if Justin Bonomo isn’t in, he doesn’t wanna be either.
If you had your money on Maurice Hawkins winning his first WSOP bracelet last night when he made the final table of the WSOP Mid-Stakes Championship, we hope you hedged. The title went to Yanting Jiang. And if you need a finer point put on it: the bracelet went to a brand new female open-event bracelet winner.
Vanity, thy name is Greg “FTB” Mueller. But, ya know, we’re here for the honesty. Dude doesn’t plan to study poker before the biggest final table of his life, but, dammit, he’s gonna look good on ESPN.
And finally, shout out to every person in media, content, or whatever we call it these days who made it through the entire WSOP without quitting, ending up in Urgent Care, or getting 86’d from the event by white-shirt security. Even if you couldn’t tell every story you found, you lasted longer than at least one player’s dad who flew halfway around the world to watch his kid play…and then didn’t get to see the end because he broke a rule he didn’t know he he was breaking. If there is one thing everyone in the business learns, it’s this: everything you see doesn’t end up on TV, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Get some rest, y’all. It ain’t done yet.
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Will Givens did not return from dinner break…
We’re fortunate to have an amazing team of photographers who capture the best images for us. We’ve had Joe Giron, Katerina Lukina, and Omar Sader finding the best photos for us all summer at the Aria Poker Classic and World Series of Poker. They’ve told the story of our poker summer in perfect single frames.
They’re led by our head of photography, Hayley Hochstetler, who was on hand last night as the WSOP Main Event found its way to the final table. Here are just a few of the images she captured in the final moments before the final table.
