Lucas Jumalon is the new WSOP Main Event champion. The 22 year old from Washington state closed out an eleven day marathon at the Horseshoe and Paris casinos in Las Vegas by defeating Finland’s Lauri Saaskilahti heads up in the 2026 WSOP Main Event, banking the sport’s biggest single prize of $10,000,000.
Jumalon entered the November style final table as chip leader and never relinquished the lead, a rare feat that makes him the first player to enter the final table on top and go on to win since Koray Aldemir did it in 2021. At 22, he also becomes the second youngest Main Event champion in WSOP history, trailing only Joe Cada, who won the title in 2009 at 21 years and seven months old.
A Record Crowd Chases the WSOP Main Event Bracelet
This year’s WSOP Main Event drew 9,208 entries at the $10,000 buy-in, one of the largest fields the tournament has ever seen and enough to fund a prize pool that comfortably supported an eight figure top prize. Play began on July 2 and stretched across eleven playing days before the final nine players returned to the felt for the concluding stage in early August.
Jumalon had built a commanding stack well before the unofficial final table was reached, and by the time play resumed for the official nine, he held roughly a third of the chips in play. That cushion let him play aggressively and pressure shorter stacks throughout the day, a strategy that paid off as the table thinned out.
The Final Table Falls Away
The exits came in familiar WSOP fashion, with short stacks pushing and the game gradually narrowing toward the money that mattered most. Evagoras Evagorou was the first player eliminated once the official final table began, followed by Mario Boos and Jamie Shaevel. Rami Hammoud went out in sixth, and Han Feng, who had entered the day among the shorter stacks, departed in fifth after his ace king could not hold against a rivered straight.
Michael Gagliano fell in fourth, banking $2,750,000, before Greg Mueller, long considered a live threat to Jumalon’s stack, was eliminated in third for $3,750,000. That set up a heads up battle between Jumalon and Saaskilahti, a 40 year old Finnish player whose previous career high cash sat far below the numbers now guaranteed to him.
Heads Up: Jumalon Closes the Door
The heads up match ran long, with both players trading pots on a felt that had already produced more than a week of poker. The decisive hand arrived on a board of 4-clubs, ace-spades, king-spades, jack-spades, six-spades. Saaskilahti, holding jack-three of diamonds, called a large river bet from Jumalon’s queen high before the hands went to showdown on a subsequent all in, where Saaskilahti’s ace-seven ran into Jumalon’s king-six. A six on the flop and another on the turn sealed the result, and Saaskilahti was left to collect the $6,000,000 runner up prize, the largest score of his career by a wide margin.
For Jumalon, the win instantly rewrites his résumé. He entered the summer with modest tournament earnings and leaves it as a multi millionaire and one of the most talked about young players in the game.
A Second Youngest Champion Joins Poker History
Only Joe Cada, who won in 2009, was younger when he lifted the Main Event trophy. Jumalon’s run also continues a recent trend of American winners, marking the fourth consecutive year the title has stayed in the United States. Beyond the age record, poker historians will note that Jumalon is only the second player this decade to lead the unofficial final table wire to wire into the champion’s chair, a statistic that speaks to both his card sense and his composure across a grueling final stretch.
Players who want to understand how a field this size is structured, from Day 1 flights through to the November style final table format, can find a full breakdown in Poker Pro Academy’s WSOP guidewhich walks through how the world’s largest live tournament series is organized from start to finish.
What Comes Next
Jumalon has not announced any immediate plans beyond the win, though champions in recent years have typically split their time between endorsement opportunities, high roller festivals, and a heavier tournament schedule funded by their new bankroll. Saaskilahti, for his part, said after the final hand that the run had changed his outlook on the game entirely, adding that he planned to keep playing tournaments regularly going forward.
The 2026 Main Event will be remembered as one of the largest fields in WSOP history and for producing a champion who did something only a handful of players have managed before him: leading from the first hand of the final table all the way to the last. As always, poker carries real financial risk, and players should treat tournament buy-ins as entertainment spending rather than a path to guaranteed income. Responsible gaming resources are available for players age 18 and over who want support managing their play.
