Daniel Weinman Wins Largest WSOP Main Event Prize Ever

A 35-year-old poker pro from Atlanta is on top of the poker world. Daniel Weinman won $12.1 million, the biggest prize in World Series of Poker (WSOP) history, and his second bracelet on Monday afternoon. Weinman outlasted a record-breaking field of 10,043 entrants who generated a massive $94 million prize pool for the Horseshoe Las Vegas tournament.

Weinman beat Steven Jones, a 35-year-old real estate broker from Scottsdale, Ariz., in a battle of top pair (J-J-8) vs. top pair with a better kicker (J-J-K). When the ace of hearts hit the river, Weinman turned to his ecstatic rail to celebrate.

Jones still won $6.5 million, his first cash in a $10K event, and an extraordinary showing for an amateur player.

The final table restarted a little more than two hours earlier, with Weinman and Jones facing Las Vegas poker pro Adam Walton. Jones had been in first place with 40% of the chips with Weinman trailing and Walton, who had been the final table chip leader, in command of a short stack that wasn’t all that short. He held 83 big blinds to Jones’ 119.

Aggressive play sent Walton to the rail within an hour of the game’s restart. He finished the day $4 million richer than when he started when his pocket 8s failed to improve against Weinman’s pocket aces. This gave Weinman 74% of the chips in play, a lead he never relinquished to Jones.

With more than $3.7 million in career earnings, Weinman previously won the 2015 WSOP Circuit Cherokee Main Event. His previous best WSOP Main Event finish was 173rd place.

Weinman’s win ends the longest WSOP streak without an American Main Event champion: four years.

On Sunday night, during the first day of final-table play, Jones won a sizable pot from Germany’s Jan-Peter Jachtmann during four-handed play to vault into the lead for a few hands before Walton finally sent Jachtmann to the rail.

That ended the chances of a potential champ from Germany for the third time in the last five years.