ShareDaniel Weinman has won the 2023 World series of Poker Main Event for a record-breaking $12,100,000. The 35-year-old from Georgia, USA, took home the lion’s share of a monster $93,399,900 prize pool after topping a 10,043 strong field.
Weinman revealed that he was unsure about playing this year after only cashing once in the previous 16 years. He had actually taken a break mid-series and wasn’t going to return to the action but no doubt he’s extremely happy that he relented and gave it a shot.
He was also only a turn and river from heading to the rail on Day 8 after he sucked out in dramatic fashion. This turned out to be the most pivotal hand of the whole series.
Day 10 turned out to be much shorter than anticipated. It only took 164 hands for Weinman to seal the deal. This was surprising with an average big blind count of around 100 that should have had the tournament going on for much longer.
Adam Walton was the first to go. After calling a raise with pocket eights preflop, Weinman squeezed from the big blind, Jones folded, and Walton felt the time was right to jam his remaining 80bb stack. Unfortunately, Weinman wasn’t bluffing and flipped over two red aces after snap-calling.
Heads-up promised much with more than 200 big blinds still on the table, but after a level of cat and mouse, the two deep stacks crashed together and it was all over in the blink of an eye.
A relatively non-descript jack high flop saw both players hit top pair and neither wanted to let it go. After a bet call on the flop and Jones shipping it over Weinman’s turn barrel, Weinman called to flip over king-jack, well ahead of Jones’ jack-eight. No help came and it was all over — a new champion was to be crowned.
Weinman said: "When he went in the tank for what seemed like ten minutes, it felt like genuine uncertainty at this point. I didn't think he was trapping with a set or some kind of turned Wheel, it really did feel like he had some middling pair or a weak jack and just couldn't decide 'Is this the time to go?'
So it seems kind of weird to play this final hand for a 120 big blind pot with just one pair, but I just kind of made my decision that when he took that long and jammed, that's about where he was at."
2023 WSOP Main Event Final Table Results
| 1 | Daniel Weinman | $12,100,000 |
| 2 | Steven Jones | $6,500,000 |
| 3 | Adam Walton | $4,000,000 |
| 4 | Jan-Peter Jachtmann | $3,000,000 |
| 5 | Ruslan Prydryk | $2,400,000 |
| 6 | Dean Hutchison | $1,850,000 |
| 7 | Toby Lewis | $1,425,000 |
| 8 | Juan Maceiras | $1,125,000 |
| 9 | Daniel Holzner | $900,000 |
