Its a new career-high cash for New Jerseys David Coleman after the online grinder-turned-live high roller took down the third of three $2,000 WPT Alpha8 Trifecta events at Wynn Las Vegas for $730,300. Coleman, who spent the majority of the final table near the top of the chip counts, bested the field of 117 entries – the largest of this summers WPT Alpha8 high rollers with a nearly $2.8 million prize pool – for his first World Poker Tour victory. With the win, Coleman’s reported lifetime live earnings have surpassed more than $6 million. I lost some pots early on but it was pretty smooth overall, he said immediately after the win. I cant complain. I had the chip lead pretty much the entire final tableso it was pretty smooth.” As expected the WPT Alpha8 final table was, once again, stacked with some of the most notable players in the pokers high roller scene including Andrew LuckyChewy Lichtenberger, Pavel Plesov, Roman Hrabec, and Isaac Haxton among others. Coleman, who came up through the ranks in New Jerseys regulated online poker scene, acknowledged the tall task of tackling a live field filled with such talent. This is a stacked field with a lot of competition so youve got to bring your A game and stay focused, Coleman said. You know, just play as best as you can, try to limit the mistakes, and hopefully get lucky. In addition to the $730,300 score, Coleman locked up his seat in the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas in December. The WPT Alpha8 Trifecta leaderboard, which awarded points to players based on final table and in-the-money finishes, gave away eight $10K seats to the Top 8 players including previous winners Brock Wilson and Daniel Sepiol. For Coleman, taking down the tournament was both a cause for celebration as well as a moment of relief. Amazingevery time you win a poker tournament its like a weight off your shoulders and it feels amazing. Im so happyno words.

When the World Series of Poker Main Event started hitting mainstream popularity in 2003, the television broadcasts were built on two kinds of players – the seasoned professionals, and the amateurs getting to live out their dreams right alongside them. And as much as fans at home liked shouting at their TVs, imagining how they would’ve played a hand better, the underdog story of Chris Moneymaker is what helped build the foundation for poker as it is today. Few players could stake a stronger claim to underdog status with less than 300 players remaining on Day 5 of the 2024 WSOP Main Event than Apple Landerman. The 50-year-old who calls Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii home has been all over the world. He’s spent time living and working in Austin, Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas, and Costa Rica, chasing a variety of different pursuits and passions. Tournament poker is simply the latest stop on that journey, and in his first-ever WSOP Main Event he’s managed to build a considerable stack to this point in the tournament. Beyond poker, change has been a constant for most of Landman’s life. But one year ago, long before he entered the brightest spotlight poker has to offer, Landerman was living the most drastic shift of his well-traveled life – the Maui fires, which claimed more than 100 lives and destroyed more than 2,200 buildings, including Landerman’s home, in the devastation. “You know, you lose everything you owned for 30 years, but the thing about it is all your stuff doesn’t mean a fucking thing when you lose friends and people in that community,” said Landerman. In the immediate aftermath Landerman, who was a firefighter in Austin for eight years, volunteered in the efforts to try to save as much as could be saved on the island of Maui. “I was helping water after the fires with the other guys,” said Landerman. “We were watering the trees afterward. Kind of the first thing about rebuilding the town was keeping what survived alive.” Over the last few months, Landerman has spent a lot of time traveling, including a long stretch in Costa Rica. That’s where he picked up poker, a game that he’d largely seen on TV and online, and he dove in head-first. He credits the vlogs of Daniel Negreanu and Brad Owen for helping to rapidly improve his game. “Poker is a fun game,” said Landerman. “I’m so intrigued by it. I love it. It’s so fascinating, and truly I hope one day I get to thank Daniel Negreanu for truly getting my ass here. I mean, he’s given me confidence just through listening to him. The knowledge he has on that YouTube channel is amazing.” Landerman’s next stop was Austin to visit a friend, and with an abundance of excitement and confidence the pair hatched a plan to get Landerman into the WSOP Main Event. “I was on an extended vacation hanging out with my buddy in Austin, and we decided that I would put up half the WSOP Main Event buy-in and he’d put up half, and we just did it. Well, if you’re gonna do that, invest in me, I’m gonna respect that and come play, try some tournaments and see if I’m even worthy. And so then I came to Vegas.” Landerman ended up in Vegas in late April and started firing tournaments – the first live events he’d ever played in his life. He rattled off 10 final tables and two victories in nightly events at South Point and Wynn Las Vegas across late April and early May, and that convinced him that he was indeed ready to try his hand at playing the WSOP Main Event. He returned to Maui briefly to lock a few things up, and then dove headfirst back into tournaments over the last few weeks. Landerman got his first career WSOP cash in the Seniors Championship, fired a few more South Point tournaments, and then joined the WSOP Main Event field on Day 1C Friday. Six days later, Landerman had locked up some significant pay jumps as he built his stack to over 3 million. He ended up landing a seat on the main “mothership” stage in front of all the TV cameras. He struck an image of a seasoned veteran, wearing sunglasses and a hat – a hat that carried significant meaning. It’s the one he wore as part of the championship roster of the Maui Adult Baseball League’s ‘Upcountry Dirtbags,’ for whom Landerman is a pitcher. It helped form part of his lucky outfit, a reflection of his lifelong love of baseball and a healthy dose of superstition that comes with playing the game for that long “I’m rocking that good vibes,” said Landerman. “With the hat, the championship hat, and I’ve been in the same clothes for five fucking days, because one of the baseball little things is you don’t want to change your dirty uniform when you’re on a hot streak.” Through all of his adventures and trying times, Landerman maintained an overwhelmingly positive outlook that helped sustain him for such a long stretch in the WSOP Main Event. “I’ve got so much support, it’s so rad,” said Landerman. “So many people back from Maui, from Austin, Texas, from Tahoe, from Costa Rica, South Carolina. I’m playing for so many more people than just me. I’m playing for my buddy that spotted me. I want to make my mom proud. Even if I go in and lose the next hand, I’m fucking happy.” If narratives won out over the way poker tends to deliver bad luck and bad news, Landerman would be a standout candidate to become WSOP Main Event champion and take home the $10 million first-place prize. Unfortunately, Landerman’s luck in this tournament would quickly run out during an all-too-brief TV table appearance as he lost all of his chips over the course of two tough-luck hands against Kristen Foxen. Landerman’s been through a lot over the last year, but he lived every second of the WSOP Main Event experience with joy, taking several chances to chat up Jeff Platt and soak everything in as he walked around the tournament between hands. The $50,000 cash for his 245th place finish is far and away his best tournament result to date, and ideally, this won’t be the last time we see Landerman on such a stage. In his exit interview, Landerman toasted his friends back home as he lifted up a celebratory beer and reflected on a tournament well fought and a moment he’ll never forget. “It’s an amazing experience,” Landerman told Jeff Platt. “I’d suggest this to everyone that’s sitting on the couch just like I was last year, and the years before. It’s the most thrilling, unbelievable poker experience of all time. Unbelievable to get to go down in a big ball of flames on TV in front of all my Maui friends. Aloha.”

Jonathan Tamayo has been in this position before. In the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, Tamayo played all the way to Day 8 of the tournament before his elimination in 21st place, good for $352,832 – to date still the biggest live cash of his career. And after a strong start to Day 6 of the 2024 WSOP Main Event, Tamayo’s getting a second chance to chase poker immortality and the $10 million first-place prize. In his second time around, Tamayo is clear that this has been a far bigger challenge than his first time in the deepest waters of this tournament. “They’re way better now,” Tamayo said of the competition. “You can’t really mess around that much with no reason. Messing around is going to cost you a lot of money now.” Over the course of his poker career Tamayo’s accumulated over $2.3 million in live tournament cashes in total, along with more than $1 million won in online tournaments. The online streets are where his game was forged, along with significant time spent playing at Turning Stone Casino in Upstate New York during his time attending Cornell University. These days, most of Tamayo’s poker is played in local events near his current home in suburban Houston, and during summers playing the WSOP. When it comes to this particular tournament, the WSOP Main Event, Tamayo has a resource to lean on that few remaining players in the field have. Tamayo’s roommate for this summer, as has been the case for a number of summers, is his good friend Joe McKeehen, the 2015 WSOP Main Event champion. In fact, in his bio on X, Tamayo lists in his bio, “Defensive Coordinator of the 2015 Main Event Champion.” “Oh, it helps, because he’s done it,” Tamayo says of his chance to pick McKeehen’s brain. “He knows how the tournament progresses. He knows how hands progress. He knows how people react, so the car rides are fun. We don’t sit down for two or three hours, but we have 20 or 30 minutes on those rides throughout the year. Even the random conversations help a lot.” When he’s not playing poker, Tamayo’s found considerable success in some of the biggest daily fantasy sports contests in the world. Tamayo has made runs in big contests across most of the major sports, but hockey was where he enjoyed his most notable victory to date. “I won the Fantasy Hockey Championship on DraftKings in March 2019, somehow tied it so I get my name on a big shiny trophy. They also gave us a wrestling belt and it’s back home – it was heavy. I got to walk down the streets of Washington D.C. with that. I never won one of the $1 million prizes – second twice, but can’t complain. It’s just as much of a grind as poker.” If there’s one thing Tamayo’s proven himself capable thus far in the 2024 WSOP Main Event, it’s grinding. After playing on a short stack through the bubble and long stretches of the tournament, Tamayo made a big move in bagging 5.43 million at the end of Day 5. His move to one of the featured TV tables has been a lucrative one. After eliminating Ren Lin from the tournament just before the second break of the day, Tamayo’s stack surged to over 12 million. Considering there are only 11 tables left in the tournament, he’ll be spending a lot of time in the spotlight for as long as he’s in the tournament, and it’s an environment in which he seems abundantly comfortable. “I like the TV tables. I get to be in my own bubble,” said Tamayo. “No distractions. I’m in my own world, and it’s like I’m playing online. It’s nice and quiet for me – people talk, but I’m not listening.”

The year was 2002. Russell Rosenblum had cashed in exactly one poker tournament in his life, one month prior, when after four days of poker he found himself at the final table of the 2002 World Series of Poker Main Event. The ESPN cameras were on hand to film the action, and despite none of the hole card cameras that would come into fashion in the year that followed and completely change the game, Rosenblum was on as massive a stage as there was in poker with $2 million awaiting the champion. Rosenblum played his way down until six remained, and then ran into Scott Gray’s , failing to improve. After enjoying such success at an early stage of taking poker tournaments seriously, pocketing $150,000 for his sixth place finish, the moment came and went before Rosenblum truly appreciated what had happened. “It’s a thing that Mike Matusow said to me when I almost busted in 2002, long before making the final table,” Rosenblum said. “He goes, ‘Dude, don’t think it’s gonna be so easy to get back here. Don’t screw it up, and actually cherish the moment.’ And at the time, I couldn’t cherish the moment. It’s was the first $10K I ever played, and it was just so overwhelming, every single moment.” Rosenblum enjoyed more success in tournament poker in the years that followed. In 2004, Rosenblum made the final table of the Season II WPT World Championship at Bellagio, finishing in fifth for a career-best $332,660 cash. He cashed in four subsequent WSOP Main Events, in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2022, but up until this year finished no better than 169th. Now, in 2024, Rosenblum’s the closest he’s been since 2002. He’s played through six days of the 2024 WSOP Main Event, and with 59 players left he’s starting to get a taste of what might well turn into another bite at the apple. “I want to get there,” said Rosenblum. “Believe me, I want to get there. I’m never getting back here again. It’s impossible. But I’m really just cherishing it more – it’s different. I’ll be devastated when I bust, and everybody busts but one man or woman. I’m looking around the room and just thinking, ‘Do I have some shot to get my picture up there?’ But just the fact that I can be here and have a 1% or 2% chance is so cool.” Rosenblum is the last remaining player in the 2024 WSOP Main Event field to have previously made the final table. If he can play through two more days, Rosenblum would also be claiming a piece of poker history. Eight players have had gaps of 10 years or more between WSOP Main Event final table appearances. The current record for such a gap is held by Dewey Tomko, who was the runner-up in both the 1982 and 2001 WSOP Main Events. Using the current nine-handed final table standard, Mickey Appleman (13 years), Phil Hellmuth (11 years) and Erik Seidel (11 years) each waited over a decade for a return appearance at the WSOP Main Event final table as well. As to whether or not that previous experience will serve Rosenblum as he tries to make it back, Rosenblum fairly pointed out the difference between navigating a field of 631 (as it was in 2002) and a field of 10,112. It’s about weathering the storms, putting yourself in as many good spots as possible and then managing your mentality during the tough stretches. “It’s totally different. It’s a complete minefield,” said Rosenblum. “Day 1, some people say ‘I just want to keep surviving.’ But you can’t do that, you’ll never win the tournament. Yesterday, Adrian Mateos, he’s one of the best players in the world, unquestionably. He gets away from pocket kings against aces, and the very next hand he loses everything with aces versus . Doesn’t matter how good you are – there’s an element of luck in this game, which is the reason there’s no big money chess matches. Everybody’s got a shot in this thing, right? “And you’re always dealing with a psychology about these things. Let’s say you have 5 million in chips and you lose 2 million and you’re down to 3. You feel like you’ve lost your tournament, it’s over. I’ve screwed it all up. Across the table, the other guy had 500,000 and he gets up to 1.5 million, he feels like he’s gonna win, right? You have twice as many chips as him and you feel devastated and he’s on top of the world. You have to manage those highs and lows. I came in yesterday with a lot of chips, and I rarely have a lot of chips. And I came in yesterday not being negative, but just prepared for adversity.” Rosenblum came into Day 7 sitting 32nd out of 59, with a hope that his chips will take another swing forward. He has steeled himself for the potential pain of an elimination while appreciating every hand and moment that comes his way. As much as the WSOP Main Event has changed in 22 years, so too has Rosenblum’s life. Billed as an attorney living in Bethesda, Maryland during the 2002 ESPN broadcast, making his way as a rising legal star in Washington, D.C. Rosenblum now serves as the Chairman of the Board for Lexicon Bank in Nevada, which actively courts poker players as clients and customers. That’s the life Rosenblum will be going back to whenever this run comes to an end, be it a finish in the 50s or somewhere at the final table. The last time Rosenblum was in this position, he was in his early 30s and only had to play four days to reach the final table. Six days in, with two more to go, he’s feeling the effects of 10 hours of poker a day for this many days in a row. But as he puts an eye towards making his way back to the promised land of a WSOP Main Event final table, Rosenblum felt a boost as he watched other players at his table feeling the same way. “The dealer sat down in the box at the start of the day today and goes, ‘How are y’all doing?’ And a couple of the guys just say, ‘Good.’ ‘Good.’ But one guy, he’s gotta be 26, 27 years old, and he says, ‘Good, but I’m tired as hell. And I looked at him. I go, ‘Wait, I thought it’s just me, the old man. Are you kidding?’ He goes, ‘I’m exhausted. I look around the table. Everyone’s 23, 24 and they’re all like, ‘We’re tired.’ The fatigue is brutal. “But life is good. I can’t complain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m gonna bust this thing and go, ‘Oh, that was fun. I’ll be devastated for sure. But just getting back this deep again, making the final table, that would be really cool. Honestly, it’s impossible.”

On Sunday at noon, in the Paris Ballroom in Las Vegas, high-stakes poker legend Patrik Antonius was named as this year’s inductee to the Poker Hall of Fame. In the modern era of poker, few have ben as bold and fearless as Patrik Antonius, said Executive Director of the WSOP Ty Stewart. A force both online and live, were thrilled to see Patriks high-stakes career acknowledged by legends who have added the first international player to the Poker Hall of Fame in years. From Helsinki, Finland, Antonius, 43, emerged during the poker boom as one of the toughest cash game players in the world who routinely battled, both live and online, with the biggest names in the game before turning into one of pokers brightest stars himself. The induction of Antonius is a stiff rebuttal to the commonly held belief that a defined number of World Series of Poker bracelets is needed to win the necessary votes for induction. Having yet to win a bracelet, Antonius on-camera, on-the-felt results in both cash games and tournaments were enough to turn the tide in his favor and lock up a spot on the walls of the Hall of Fame Poker Room at Horseshoe Las Vegas. Even without a WSOP bracelet on his resume, Antonius tournament results are more than bona fide for the Hall of Fame. With nearly $23 million in recorded tournament earnings, according to The Hendon Mob, Antonius has six seven-figure scores, that include a runner-up finish in the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl Macau for a career-high score of more than $3.1 million. Additionally, hes claimed an EPT Main Event and EPT High Roller title, as well as a Triton title in 2022, and a runner-up finish at the Season IV edition of WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic in 2005 – just to note the test of time requirement. Ultimately, it was Antonius competitive nature that helped him get to where he is today. From his early days online as a regular in Full Tilts nosebleed Rail Heaven cash games, to becoming a fixture on late-night poker TV including Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker, Antonius has never been one to back down from pokers biggest stage. Its something his fans have enjoyed for more than two decades and something his peers clearly admire, honoring him, in his second nomination, with a spot in the Poker Hall of Fame.

Poker fans are prepared for some level of spectacle when it comes to the World Series of Poker Main Event final table – coordinated T-shirts, chants, and large collections of friends and family coming together to support a player as they enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But when loud chants and boisterous celebrations started to ring throughout the ballroom at Horseshoe Las Vegas on Day 6 of the 2024 WSOP Main Event, days away from the final table and millions of dollars directly on the line, it took a lot of people by surprise. If you’ve been watching the PokerGO broadcasts at home, you’ve probably heard the commotion from the outer tables on multiple occasions. At the center of that attention has been 35-year-old Yegor Moroz, and his rail of friends and supporters have grown in size and volume since that point in the tournament. Now onto Day 8 with just 16 players remaining, Moroz is one day away from getting all of those people around the WSOP Main Event final table. “I mean, it’s been unreal. This is the best group of friends that I could ever ask for,” said Moroz. “All these people have been showing up, supporting and loving unconditionally. And then being there for all the moments and even in spots where they couldn’t even really see what was going on. But they were there. The group is a conglomeration of different phases of Moroz’s life. There are friends from his time attending the University of Florida, where he first learned to play poker. Others come from South Florida, poker players and others who share Moroz’s love of music and attending festivals. There are also friends Moroz has made since moving to Las Vegas. At the center of this group, the person who has been on the sidelines of this particular group the longest is Darryll Fish. The WPT Champions Club member is known for being quite reserved when he’s at the table, but he’s been the unofficial representative for the group when the cameras and sideline reporter Jeff Platt have come calling over the last few days. “I can totally respect the idea of keeping your composure and stoicism and all that sort of thing,” said Fish. “But I think there’s a lot to be said for really basking in the emotions of a once-in-a-lifetime experience like this type of run. He loves to dance, loves to have a good time, just all around a jolly guy who appreciates life – and we love him a lot.” For Fish, who’s enjoyed a lot of major successes in his poker career, watching a friend who has had $189,785 in career lifetime tournament earnings lock up a result that will multiply that total at least a few times over and potentially a lot more has been surreal and a purely joyful moment. “It’s super fun to live this experience vicariously through a friend, especially someone who’s not just a poker friend, but like a true brother,” said Fish. “Some people here have small pieces of him, I have 0%. Most of us are rooting for him out of the kindness and care of our hearts, which is I think is kind of rare in poker these days. We all dream of going deep in the Main. We don’t necessarily get to have that experience ourselves. We have a lot of our best friends here and we’re having a really good time. He’s enjoying the moment and we’re staying right there with him.” Only a few players have had a sideline support system anywhere near as potent as Moroz’s, and one of them belonged to another good friend, Jesse Capps. For most of Day 6, they played at the same table, facing each other in Seat 6 and Seat 9. Capps played into Day 7 of the 2024 WSOP Main Event and experienced a few highlights on featured tables, before ultimately going out in 51st place. Capps promptly joined Moroz’s rail at that point and has been cheering him on ever since. “We’ve gone to festivals together, we hang out, we go on hikes together. He’s one he’s one of my closest friends,” said Capps. “Going deep with him was so cool, because we were we were sweating each other from the beginning. And then on Day 6, we make it to the same table. The last hand, he gets a player all in and his whole rail tries to rush to the table and security stops them, so I’m shouting out the action. When he wins, he runs to the rail, and then so do I. I was rooting for him, and honestly, probably harder than I was rooting for myself.” “When does that ever happen? When do friends get to sit together Day 6 or Day 7 of the Main Event?” said Moroz. “It’s just incredible, and when we weren’t in pots together, it’s cool to just share the space and and kind of feel through it, because there’s everyone on the rail, they have their own experience. But being at the same table, you can feel like what they’re going through and almost feel the hands as they happen.” Moroz has spent considerable time on Day 7 and Day 8 at the primary featured table, giving the audience at home a more direct sense of what that rail has been like up close. In the biggest hand he’s played thus far in the tournament, Moroz flopped a set of jacks against pocket aces and the celebrations included beer getting splashed around and people climbing on one another’s shoulders. A deeper look at that rail reveals some big-time pros, including Fish, Adam ‘Roothlus’ Levy, and a bevy of other heavy hitters, largely based out of South Florida. And as much as having good vibes and outward energy and emotional support has helped Moroz hus far, having never been in such a spot before. “He plays cash games pretty regularly, he’s played tournaments for a long time and played online a lot back in the day with us,” said Fish. “He loves the game and is surrounded by a lot of people with quite a bit of experience in the game, so he’s got a really good support system and he has been thinking through situations really well and mostly playing really good ball out there.” For Moroz, it’s been about trying to strike the balance between staying in the zone and not hearing too many voices in his head when he’s trying to stay calm under pressure. “They’ve been really amazing, being conscious of not trying to change anything up or put ideas in my head or whatever,” said Moroz. “Obviously there’s a lot of really talented people here, and they’re gonna let me just kind of play my game and then give me feedback when when I come and offer hands, which is exactly what I need. It’s been perfect. Be heard, received, get that feedback and go back to my space.” Moroz and his friends have brought an energy into the room, and whether it’s been in response to that chanting and support or the natural progression of the tournament, a few other players and their rails have stepped up their game for Day 7 and Day 8. For Moroz, acknowledging his friends after big hands and on breaks has served to keep him grounded and happy, preventing him from getting overwhelmed by the stakes at hand. And if they manage to get into the heads of his opponents at all, that’s just a cherry on top. “I feel like the rest of the room can feel them, and that’s amazing. That’s what kept my spirits up,” said Moroz. “I feel like it was drawing in all that good energy. It’s good to feel having people rooting for you.”