GipsyTeam, one of the largest online poker communities in the world, has revealed its 2026 poker Hall of Fame class, and the five inductees say as much about how the game has changed as who plays it best. Shaun Deeb, Patrick “Pads” Leonard, Alan Keating, Garrett Adelstein and Ethan “Rampage” Yau were announced during the closing days of the WSOP Main Event final table, giving the news extra visibility while poker’s world was already watching Las Vegas.
It is worth separating this honor from the sport’s other, more famous one. The official WSOP Poker Hall of Fame is run by Caesars through a formal panel, while GipsyTeam’s version is a community project with its own rules and history. The two lists sometimes overlap in spirit, but they are not the same institution.
How the GipsyTeam Poker Hall of Fame Vote Works
For 2026, GipsyTeam changed its process. Existing members each received votes to nominate candidates, and anyone crossing a set threshold qualified. The change was meant to allow more than the usual one or two inductees a year. The electorate stayed fairly conservative, settling on five names, a bigger class than usual but not the flood some expected.
Shaun Deeb Brings Bracelets and Bluntness
Shaun Deeb heads the class with nine WSOP bracelets and two WSOP Player of the Year titles, won in 2018 and again in 2025. Few players move as comfortably between low stakes hold’em fields and punishing high roller mixed games, and readers who want the full rundown of how that award and the bracelet chase work can check our WSOP Guide for context.
Deeb has also built a reputation for speaking his mind, frequently criticizing WSOP operational decisions on social media in ways many grinders privately agree with. Off the felt, he is remembered for one of poker’s strangest side wagers. Businessman Bill Perkins bet Deeb one million dollars against Deeb’s one hundred thousand that he could not cut his body fat from 40 percent to 17 percent. Deeb dropped more than 35 kilograms chasing the number, got close enough that Perkins paid out early and pocketed 800,000 dollars for the effort.
Patrick “Pads” Leonard Is Online Poker’s Quiet Giant
Patrick Leonard, known across forums as Pads, is an English tournament specialist from Newcastle who found poker in 2009 and never slowed down. He has finished ranked number one on PocketFives five times and owns 13 WCOOP titles on PokerStars, a tally that already places him among the format’s most decorated players.
In March 2026 Leonard set an all time SCOOP record, winning two consecutive 8-Game tournaments in one night. Across WCOOP and SCOOP he holds 29 titles combined and close to 20 million dollars in career prize money. His live resume includes a first bracelet from the 2022 WSOP Team Event for 148,067 dollars, a runner up finish at the 2017 Bellagio Cup for 475,940 dollars, and a PGT Kickoff 2025-2026 win worth 315,000 dollars, pushing live earnings past 5 million dollars. He also launched CoinMasters on CoinPoker, a series that awards real silver and gold plated coins.
Alan Keating and Garrett Adelstein Represent the Cash Game Boom
Alan Keating earned the nickname “the most dangerous man in poker” after his April 2022 debut on Hustler Casino Live, where a VPIP nearing 70 percent made him appointment viewing. He reportedly comes from money but built a separate fortune through investments, and poker began for him strictly as a hobby. His formal tournament resume is thin, roughly 250,000 dollars in live cashes since 2007, yet his projected cash game profit for 2025-2026 sits near 6 million dollars, mostly earned on camera on Hustler Casino Live, Poker After Dark and No Gamble No Future.
Garrett Adelstein’s path started differently. Inspired by Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 Main Event win, he registered his first online account as “GMan” at 18 in 2004 and climbed quickly into high stakes online games. Black Friday in 2011 pushed him toward live poker, where he later coached for Phil Galfond’s Run It Once project and appeared on Survivor: Cagayan. He became a fixture of deep stacked cash games from 2017 onward, but is best known for the 2022 “J4o” hand against Robbie Lew on Hustler Casino Live, an unusual jack high call that triggered public cheating concerns and a partial pot return, one of the most debated controversies in modern poker, though no formal finding of wrongdoing followed. His memoir, “Beneath the Cards,” arrives in September 2026.
Ethan “Rampage” Yau Is the Class’s Rising Star
Born in 1997, Ethan Yau is the youngest member of this Hall of Fame class. He left a sales and startup career after a business degree to chase poker and YouTube content in winter 2018, naming vloggers Brad Owen, Andrew Neeme and Jonny Vibes as inspirations. His first WSOP bracelet came in 2020 in a 500 dollar no limit hold’em event streamed on his channel, and in 2022 he won the WPT World Championship 25,000 dollar High Roller for 894,240 dollars.
By mid-2026 Yau had two WPT titles, two WSOP bracelets, several WSOP Circuit rings and close to 4 million dollars in live winnings, backed by a YouTube following in the hundreds of thousands that opened doors at Hustler Casino Live and The Lodge Poker Club. His June 2026 stretch stood out on its own: roughly 1.5 million dollars in cashes in two weeks, including one session worth over 700,000 dollars, capped by a second bracelet in a 5,000 dollar mixed event that finished at the casino, where he beat Adrian Mateos heads up. Off the table, Yau made headlines buying a 2005 Rayquaza Gold Star Pokemon card for 340,000 dollars, calling it a childhood dream fulfilled rather than an investment.
What the Induction Says About Modern Poker
Taken together, the five inductees trace poker’s last two decades: the grinder who out worked everyone, the online specialist who never needed a camera, the cash game outlier, the controversial figure the community still argues about, and the vlogger who turned a bracelet chase into a business. GipsyTeam’s wider voting threshold reflects how much bigger the professional player pool has become since the honor began.
None of it happened by accident, and none of it is a script. Poker remains a game of skill and variance played for real money, and the numbers above came after years of losses most fans never see. Anyone inspired by these stories should treat poker as entertainment, wager only what they can afford to lose, and remember it is meant for adults 18 and over who understand the risks.
