The World Series of Poker (WSOP): History, Main Event Winners & Legacy
The World Series of Poker is the sport’s oldest and most prestigious annual series, held in Las Vegas since 1970. It functions as poker’s unofficial world championship – the event where careers are made, and where a single summer can turn an amateur into a millionaire.
Origins
Poker legend traces the WSOP’s roots to 1949, when Las Vegas casino owner Benny Binion is said to have staged a marathon heads-up match between Johnny Moss and Nick “The Greek” Dandolos. The exact details of that match – its length and Moss’s final winnings – have been retold so many times, with so many varying figures, that poker historians now treat much of the story as legend rather than verified fact. What’s undisputed is that Binion used the idea to launch a formal tournament in 1970, inviting a small group of top American players to his Horseshoe Casino. The inaugural champion, decided by a vote of the players themselves rather than a tournament bracket, was Johnny Moss.
From 1971 onward, the Main Event took its now-familiar shape: a $10,000 buy-in, winner-takes-all freezeout in No-Limit Texas Hold’em. Early champions included Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, and Sailor Roberts – players who went on to help define the sport for decades afterward.
Growth Into a Global Sport
Broadcast coverage and the rise of low-cost satellite qualifiers made the Main Event accessible to far more than just professionals, gradually building the modern field sizes.
Chris Moneymaker, an amateur accountant, satellited into the Main Event online and won it for $2.5 million. The story – and the online poker boom it triggered – remains the single most consequential moment in the game’s modern history.
The Main Event drew 8,773 entrants and an almost $82.5 million prize pool, with Jamie Gold taking home $12 million – still one of the largest first-place payouts in the event’s history.
The WSOP brand has since expanded beyond Las Vegas through WSOP Europe, WSOP Paradise, and online bracelet events, drawing a genuinely international player base to what started as a US-only affair.
Notable Records
- Phil Hellmuth holds the all-time bracelet record with 17.
- Phil Ivey sits second with 11 bracelets.
- Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan are tied for third with 10 bracelets each – Chan remains the last player to win back-to-back Main Events, in 1987 and 1988.
- Joe Cada became the youngest Main Event champion in 2009 at 21 years old, winning $8.55 million.
- Michael Mizrachi made history in 2025 by winning both the Main Event and the Poker Players Championship in the same summer, later earning induction into the Poker Hall of Fame.
WSOP Main Event Winners
The 1970 champion was chosen by a vote among competing players rather than a tournament finish. Field sizes weren’t formally tracked in the event’s earliest decades (“N/A” below), and 2020 used a hybrid online/live format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why that year’s field and prize are far smaller than the years around it.
| Year | Winner | Winnings (USD) | Entrants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | Johnny Moss | N/A (vote) | N/A |
| 1976 | Doyle Brunson | $220,000 | N/A |
| 1977 | Doyle Brunson | $340,000 | N/A |
| 1987 | Johnny Chan | $625,000 | N/A |
| 1988 | Johnny Chan | $700,000 | N/A |
| 1989 | Phil Hellmuth | $755,000 | N/A |
| 1991 | Brad Daugherty | $1,000,000 | N/A |
| 1995 | Dan Harrington | $1,000,000 | N/A |
| 2000 | Chris Ferguson | $1,500,000 | 512 |
| 2001 | Carlos Mortensen | $1,500,000 | 613 |
| 2002 | Robert Varkonyi | $2,000,000 | 631 |
| 2003 | Chris Moneymaker | $2,500,000 | 839 |
| 2004 | Greg Raymer | $5,000,000 | 2,576 |
| 2005 | Joe Hachem | $7,500,000 | 5,619 |
| 2006 | Jamie Gold | $12,000,000 | 8,773 |
| 2007 | Jerry Yang | $8,250,000 | 6,358 |
| 2008 | Peter Eastgate | $9,152,416 | 6,844 |
| 2009 | Joe Cada | $8,547,042 | 6,494 |
| 2010 | Jonathan Duhamel | $8,944,310 | 7,319 |
| 2011 | Pius Heinz | $8,715,638 | 6,865 |
| 2012 | Greg Merson | $8,531,853 | 6,598 |
| 2013 | Ryan Riess | $8,361,570 | 6,352 |
| 2014 | Martin Jacobson | $10,000,000 | 6,683 |
| 2015 | Joe McKeehen | $7,683,346 | 6,420 |
| 2016 | Qui Nguyen | $8,005,310 | 6,737 |
| 2017 | Scott Blumstein | $8,150,000 | 7,221 |
| 2018 | John Cynn | $8,800,000 | 7,874 |
| 2019 | Hossein Ensan | $10,000,000 | 8,569 |
| 2020 | Damian Salas (hybrid format) | $2,550,969 | 1,379 |
| 2021 | Koray Aldemir | $8,000,000 | 6,650 |
| 2022 | Espen Jorstad | $10,000,000 | 8,663 |
| 2023 | Daniel Weinman | $12,100,000 | 10,043 |
| 2024 | Jonathan Tamayo | $10,000,000 | 10,112 (largest ever) |
| 2025 | Michael Mizrachi | $10,000,000 | 9,735 |
| 2026 | Lucas Jumalon | $10,000,000 | 9,208 |
Other Major Tours Worth Knowing
The WSOP shares the modern tournament calendar with several other major series – our guides to the European Poker Tour, Asia Pacific Poker Tour, and the online Sunday Million cover each in detail.
Why It Still Matters
More than fifty years after that first invitational at the Horseshoe, the WSOP remains the sport’s defining measuring stick – not because winning it guarantees anything about a player’s future results, but because the size and depth of its fields make a bracelet, and especially a Main Event title, the closest thing poker has to an undisputed world championship.
