Jonathan Tamayo is a 38-year-old poker player from Humble, Texas, best known for winning the record-breaking 2024 World Series of Poker Main Event for $10 million.
The Main Event win marked his first WSOP bracelet, which joined the four WSOP circuit rings he'd won across his career.
As expected, the eight-figure windfall was the biggest cash of his career and took his live tournament earnings to more than $12.3 million.
Jonathan Tamayo's Main Event Story
Tamayo made a strong run in the 2009 Main Event, finishing in a commendable 21st place for $352,832. It would take another 15 years for him to make the late stages of Poker's World Championship. In that time span, Tamayo watched his good friend Joe McKeehen take down the 2015 edition and was even in McKeehen's winner's photo.
Fast forward a decade and a half, McKeehen was watching on from the sidelines and then presented the bracelet to Tamayo after the latter defeated Jordan Griff in heads-up play.
Tamayo entered the final table seventh in chips and spoke to PokerNews ahead of the FT.
"It feels like it would never happen [again]," he told PokerNews, "Because I feel like in my head, you get one shot in life at this, and you never get it again. And now I have multiple — two shots inside the top 50.
"I don't think I even have a final table at a tournament here at the Series in over a decade. I think the $1,500 HORSE was the last one. And so I said, ok, it's hard. Maybe it never happens."
Having started on Day 2, Tamayo's Main Event journey took a setback on Day 4 with his stack almost halving to sit in the lower rungs of the chip counts.
However, a stellar Day 5 saw him 12x his stack to sit 37th in chips with 160 players remaining.
He's navigated all major hurdles so far and said he worked with Dominik Nitsche and the aforementioned McKeehen on a plan for approaching the final table and the 15 big blinds he started with.
"We'll talk strategy, something that we can easily implement. You can't get too detailed, but it'll be pretty solid."
Well whatever was discussed worked miraculously as he made it to the second day of the final table, and was joined by Griff and online legend Niklas Astedt in the final 3.
Griff took out Astedt to set-up heads-up play, with Tamayo pulling off a heads-up comeback to become a Main Event champion.
Jonathan Tamayo's Top 5 Poker Results
| Date | Event | Place | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2024 | $10,000 WSOP Main Event | 1st | $10,000,000 |
| Jul 2009 | $10,000 WSOP Main Event | 21st | $352,832 |
| May 2021 | $1,100 NLHE | 1st | $237,935 |
| Feb 2013 | $1,675 WSOPC Palm Beach | 1st | $206,020 |
| Apr 2024 | $3,300 NLHE | 3rd | $180,000 |
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