Total Earnings excluding Main Event win

The late Noel Furlong's (RIP) real first name was John, he was nicknamed Noel because he was born on Christmas Day. (1937)

Koray only just won the main not long ago and already top the winnings outside main, he's gonna run away with this as time goes on being the high stakes crusher that he is..

It would be interesting to break this down between earnings before and after winning the Main.

Agree this is interesting and largely agrees with those I view winning the main a fish on heaters (Gold, Yang, Qui,…). Though for some it might be just lack of post ME play. If someone, even a crusher, decides $7+ mil is plenty to move on from poker, his stats may not demonstrate his ability.

Another skew is pre/post boom ME win. If someone wins before or early in the boom but continues to play a good volume later in the boom, the growth in overall prize pool size can skew things. Today ev3n middlin places in wsop events will substantially lower this ratio for pre or even early boom. Is Furgeson really the baller this stat would indicate? Or does his post ME win volume with some scores along the way skew?

Another example might be Helmuth. What does his ratio look like? I expect it would be outstanding. Is that because he is a massive baller? Or simply his total volume? (Note personally, I see him as a VERY good large MTT player. Maybe best results of all time but also maybe not as good as this stat might indicate)

Finally one additional missing data point is buyin $. Just how much are their net wins. But this level of data just doesn’t exist.

Imo this is quite interesting info. Thanks for compiling it but like all stats read with a grain of salt.

Some added thoughts:

- The lack of cash game info makes it hard to really speculate who has won X amount in their career. For example, I know Merson is an online reg who still plays a lot of cash. It sounds like he is a true poker professional in the sense of making a living playing the game, but he doesn't shine too much on a list like this because he's really not a tournament specialist. My understanding is that Cynn and Jorstad are also primarily cash game players who dabble in tournaments. Then you have someone like McKeehen, a large field NLHE MTT monster. He looks great on a list like this because it plays right into his wheelhouse.

- This list may function as a more accurate barometer of "activity level" than "skill" in the sense that guys who "take the money and run" like Heinz, Eastgate, Blumstein, and Cynn look relatively weak here. Meanwhile someone like Duhamel looks very strong. It would be irresponsible of me to speculate about his profitability because I really don't have enough information to make that call, but from the outside, it seems like he took his winnings, overestimated his skill level, jumped into a lot of very high buy-in stuff, and maybe eventually burned most of his bankroll. Again, I don't know for certain, but that's what the optics look like. So he has a bunch of really great scores on his record, but it seems like that's mainly because he was taking huge risks by jumping into lots of high rollers, which he no longer plays.

- Broadly, we can maybe categorize these guys as good players who kept winning (i.e. Cada, McKeehen, Mortensen), good players who stopped playing (i.e. Eastgate, Heinz), flukes who were smart enough to basically walk away (i.e. Yang, Varkonyi, Eastgate? Heinz? Blumstein?), and flukes who eventually gave most of it back (I won't name names, but we can speculate).

I saw Blumstein in a $100 daily tourney at Caesars Palace a couple weeks ago…maybe busto, maybe just playing with a friend

Heinz was a 2+2 member and online reg pre his win. Got some extra cash from Stars and others post win, played as much as necessary to fulfill his obligations before "retiring". Got a decent amount of mainstream media coverage in Germany to extend the boom a tiny bit longer. Saw him at King's Casino a couple times over the years but no idea what he's up to these days because I haven't been there in a while.

Lol don't read the prior paragraph then

Really, it would only make sense to keep playing poker seriously if either 1) you really loved playing poker more than just about anything. As you now have the money to do just about anything else. or 2) You are an absolute beast who makes 7 figures AND you want more money enough to keep working hard.

Like, even if you can make $100/hr+ playing poker, you should have better uses of your time once you have several million. Maybe you could have spent a year or 2 milking the name/status achieved by winning the WSOP back when people cared.

This reminds me of how a lot of people were mad at Yang for locking it up. People were like "he owes it to the poker community" to keep playing and lose it all back.

Cheers. I think that's the smartest approach.

If I won the WSOP Main, I would probably buy a house in Vegas and play 15-20 WSOP events every summer along with some random stuff at the Wynn during the year when I got the itch. You wouldn't find me in the Aria studio playing a $300k against the 20 best players in the world though.

Most of the people who have won the Main lately seem like really good players, but you would have to be a little naive to think because you binked one tournament, you are suddenly a favorite in any lineup. As lame as someone like Yang is from a poker standpoint, he obviously made the smarter choice by backing away compared with someone like Jamie Gold who jumped into HSP and was firing way over his head.

What about endorsement deals being factored in? Actually, I’m not even sure how they work in poker. Is sponsorship and endorsement strictly for staking purposes or do/did some of these guys actually get paid?

Obviously depends on the person and when they won the ME. Pretty sure Moneymaker made significantly more through his >15 years of Stars sponsorship than what he made from winning the ME.

I highly doubt the guys who won it over the last couple of years made money even remotely comparable to their ME winnings.

There's also a huge difference between winners from the US where the tax man collected half their winnings and players who have their tax residency in a country where gambling winnings aren't taxed.

Would love to see the same list but for the Main Event runners-up. How many of them were one-hit wonders and how many are legit crushers that just missed out?

Cool discussion... there are tons of final tablists that barely have another 5 figure cash on their Hendon... George Holmes has 2 tournament cashes and they were both deep runs at the Main Event... Josh Remitio finished 4th last year and doesnt have another 5 figure cash. The beauty of the Main

Keep in mind they could be cash crushers and the ME is the only tournament (of any size and reporting to HM) they play.

I don't play tournaments (been YEARS and the last one was a new room free role) but I could see maybe playing ME sometime in future. With that said, I would also choose to play some tournaments to get ready for the ME. I am not the type to just plop down $10K in a game I am not prepared for.

Were I to play the main and somehow final table/runner up/win (LOL, sure), I would look like a one hit wonder. Whether it was true or not we would not really know since there is no base to compare against. Maybe I am/would be some tournament crusher but chose to not play tournaments. (This is incredibly unlikely but let's go with it.)

Without knowing how many tournaments one even enters,it is so very hard to say. Even with knowing entries still really just a guess since variance in large, multi-day MTT is huge.

I would like to see how much they have paid in entry fees and if anyone on that list is actually making a profit.

Not sure if serious?

You would also need to know how much they sold/traded and at what markup.

THAT’S the real question. So many pieces are sold, the take-home winnings become really diluted.

Unless they sold/swapped >50%, (some or all?) non-Americans are still better off because they didn't have to pay taxes on their winnings.

This isn't accurate. Nevada(?) retains (30%?) of most winners cashes. Than they have to pay local taxes on top of that if countries don't have tax agreement with the US.

There's only a few countries that don't have local gambing taxes and have a tax agreement with the US. UK and Austria come to mind.

There are a couple on the list that moved to the UK but weren't yet tax residents, I remember reading something about that...

IRS is biggest winner of the WSOP, followed by Las Vegas Casinos, then come the players would be my guess

Canada, Australia and Germany have a tax treaty, too. How many of the non-US winners on the list didn't have their residency in one of those countries?

For the 3 Germans on the list, most likely only Aldemir would have had to pay taxes on his winnings in Germany. Therefore his tax residency is in Austria.

From what I recall Eastgate and Pius Heinz had to pay sizeable amounts

I think Aldemir was already a non-tax resident of Germany so he kept all his prize except any piece sold or swapped action.

Pius Heinz had his tax residency in Austria at the time of his WSOP win. (FWIW he also disclosed that he sold 30%)