Mark Davis, the WPT champion from Alabama who denied Darren Elias a record fifth World Poker Tour title in 2022, has died at age 46 following a stroke. Davis passed away on Saturday, July 25, 2026, according to PokerNews, leaving the poker community mourning one of its most respected regional grinders.
A Sudden Loss for the Poker Community
Davis suffered a stroke and was airlifted to the hospital, where he experienced additional strokes before he died. The news came as a shock to the many players who knew him from the Southern tournament circuit, where he had built a reputation over more than two decades as both a formidable competitor and a well liked figure at the tables.
Over the course of his career, Davis recorded more than $2.3 million in live tournament earnings, a total built not through a single headline score but through years of consistent, grinding results across dozens of stops.
Mark Davis WPT Champion Moment at Seminole Hard Rock
The defining achievement of Davis’s career came in 2022, when he won the $3,500 buy-in WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown for $1,000,000. The victory instantly became the largest score of his career and cemented his status among the top players to come out of the Alabama scene.
What made the win especially memorable was who stood across the table from him in heads-up play. Davis defeated Darren Elias, one of the most accomplished tournament grinders in World Poker Tour history, denying Elias what would have been a record-extending fifth WPT title. For a player who had spent most of his career on the regional grind rather than the sport’s biggest stages, beating a four-time champion to claim a seven-figure score in one of poker’s premier tours was a landmark moment. Understanding how tournament poker works helps explain why that single result carried so much weight: in a single-elimination bracket format, one great week can outweigh years of smaller finishes, and Davis made that week count against one of the toughest opponents available.
Three-Time WSOP Circuit Ring Winner
Beyond his WPT title, Davis was a three-time World Series of Poker Circuit ring winner, a distinction that speaks to his consistency across different tours and formats. His largest Circuit score came in the 2022 WSOPC Cherokee Main Event, where he outlasted a field of 1,402 entries to win $334,678.
WSOP Circuit rings are earned across a season of stops nationwide, and winning three of them, plus a Main Event title against a field of well over a thousand players, is the kind of resume that marks a player as a serious, respected competitor rather than someone who got lucky once. Combined with his WPT title, Davis’s collection of hardware placed him among the more accomplished mid-major tournament players of his generation.
A Familiar Face at Choctaw and Harrah’s Cherokee
Davis was a fixture at two of the most important card rooms in the Southern poker circuit: Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma and Harrah’s Cherokee in North Carolina. Both venues host regular series that draw players from across the region, and Davis’s consistent presence at these rooms made him a known quantity to hundreds of grinders who competed alongside him over the years.
That regional visibility, rather than a heavy touring schedule on the national poker map, was central to how Davis built his career and his reputation. He was, by all accounts, exactly the kind of player who keeps the mid-major tournament scene alive: someone who shows up consistently, competes hard, and treats the same rooms and the same opponents as a kind of extended community.
Remembered by Friends and Fellow Players
Fellow Alabama player Michael Graydon remembered Davis as someone who brought both intensity and generosity to the game. Davis was, in Graydon’s words, “fierce at the tables but had a huge heart and was there for people when they needed him.”
Davis also spoke about the role that coaching played in his 2022 breakthrough, crediting high-stakes coach Chance Kornuth’s guidance for helping him capture the WPT Seminole Hard Rock title. Davis said their playing styles naturally aligned, a detail that speaks to how much thought and preparation went into a win that some observers might have otherwise chalked up to a hot run of cards.
A Final Cash Just Days Before His Death
Davis remained active on the tournament trail right up until his final days. His last recorded cash came just over a week before his death, when he finished 68th for $652 at a Gulf Coast Poker Mid-South event in Tunica, Mississippi. It was a modest, unremarkable result by the standards of his career, the kind of finish any grinder collects dozens of times over a career, and a reminder that he was still doing what he loved until the very end.
Davis’s death leaves a gap in the Alabama and broader Southern poker community, where he was known as much for his character as for his results. His $1,000,000 WPT title, his three WSOP Circuit rings, and his more than $2.3 million in earnings stand as a record of a career built on persistence, skill, and respect for the game.
