Joe McKeehen, the 2015 WSOP Main Event champion, won Event 7 of the PGT Sprint in Las Vegas, topping a 53-entry field in the $10,500 no-limit hold’em event to collect $174,900 and his first PokerGO Tour title of the year. The victory capped a strong run through the short series for McKeehen, who had already made two other final table appearances in the Sprint before closing it out with a heads-up win over Daniyal Gheba.
A Former World Champion Still Grinding the Felt
McKeehen’s name has carried weight in the poker world since 2015, when he won the WSOP Main Event and the $7.68 million first-place prize that came with it. More than a decade later, he remains a fixture on the high-stakes tournament circuit, and Event 7 of the PGT Sprint gave him his first PokerGO Tour title of 2026. It did not come easily. Earlier in the same series, McKeehen had cashed for a minimum payout in Event 1, finished fourth in Event 2, and placed third in Event 4, building a quiet case as one of the series’ most consistent performers before finally breaking through for the win.
That consistency matters in a series format like the Sprint, where ranking points accumulate across a handful of events rather than a single marquee tournament. By the time Event 7 rolled around as the final event on the schedule, McKeehen had already shown he could navigate the Sprint’s smaller, sharper fields. Closing the series with a title was the capstone to a stretch of near-misses turned into a statement result.
Inside the $10,500 Final Table
Event 7 drew 53 entries at the $10,500 buy-in level, a field that combined recreational shots with a cluster of well-known tournament regulars. The listed payouts for the final table told the story of how top-heavy the structure was: McKeehen’s $174,900 for first place dwarfed the $111,300 that runner-up Daniyal Gheba collected, while Darren Elias banked $74,200 for third. Nicholas Schulte, Jamie Dwan, Neil Warren and Brandon Wilson rounded out the remaining final table spots, taking home $53,000, $42,400, $31,800 and $21,200 respectively.
British player Jamie Dwan set the tone early, playing aggressively from the opening hands of the final table and personally sending the first two players to the rail. That fast start trimmed the table quickly and forced the remaining players into a tighter, higher-pressure game sooner than they might have expected from a field of this size.
Gheba’s Surge and the Five-Handed Turning Point
The tournament’s shape changed once the field reached five players. McKeehen took the chip lead at that point, putting himself in position to dictate the pace, but Daniyal Gheba answered with one of the more dominant stretches of the final table. Gheba won a string of pivotal pots and eliminated three players in succession, flipping the chip counts and arriving at heads-up play with the advantage over McKeehen.
That left McKeehen with roughly half of Gheba’s stack as heads-up began, a deficit that would have ended plenty of tournament runs. Instead, McKeehen chipped away methodically, evened the stacks, and then pulled ahead for good. The final stretch turned into a reversal of the five-handed momentum that had briefly put Gheba in control, and McKeehen closed out the win to secure the $174,900 first-place prize and the title.
McKeehen’s First PGT Title of 2026
For a player with a World Series of Poker Main Event bracelet already on his resume, a $10,500 PokerGO Tour title might not rewrite his legacy, but it adds another data point to a career built on steady, high-level tournament play rather than one signature score. McKeehen has spent years mixing marquee buy-ins with tighter, high-roller-style fields like the Sprint, and Event 7 is a reminder that the fundamentals that carried him to a Main Event title in 2015 still hold up against sharp, modern fields more than a decade later.
The win also closes out the PGT Sprint series on a strong note for McKeehen specifically, turning a run of near-misses, a min-cash, a fourth, and a third, into a title at the final event on the calendar. That kind of progression, building through a series rather than peaking in a single event, is often what separates consistent pros from players who simply run hot once.
What’s Next on the PokerGO Tour Calendar
With the Sprint now complete, ranking points for the broader PokerGO Tour season remain up for grabs elsewhere. Players can continue building their standing at the WSOP Paradise and the WPT World Championship, both on the December calendar, before the season wraps with the PGT Last Chance event in January. For McKeehen, Event 7 gives him momentum heading into that stretch, and a reminder to the field that a former world champion with a quiet recent run can still close out a series when it matters.
Readers newer to tournament poker who want to understand how pros like McKeehen navigate a shrinking final table, when to apply pressure as the chip leader and when to play patiently from behind, can find the fundamentals in Poker Pro Academy’s how to play poker guidewhich walks through the basics that underpin even the highest buy-in final tables. From a $10,500 Sprint event to the Main Event that made him famous, McKeehen’s results continue to show that the core skills of tournament poker travel across every price point.
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