The Muck · WSOP Daily Brief
Day 76
The bill arrived. Russ Fox published his annual accounting and Card Player ran the numbers Saturday: of the $30,250,000 paid to the 2026 Main Event final table, $12,273,963 goes to various governments, which is more than 40 percent and more than second place. Jamie Shaevel of Santa Monica keeps less than half of his seventh-place money. The champion keeps just over six million of his ten. Elsewhere Lucas Jumalon spent his first business week as world champion signing with the agency that represents Negreanu and Hellmuth, an accomplished Bridge player from Turkey won the only Main Event trophy handed out anywhere on earth this week, and the WSOP quietly has rings on the felt in North Carolina while the entire industry stares at a Vegas ballroom that has been empty since Wednesday.
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Card Player's Sean Chaffin published the annual tax breakdown on Saturday, built on Russ Fox of Clayton Financial and Tax of Las Vegas, who runs the numbers every year on the Taxable Talk blog. Of the $30,250,000 awarded to the nine final tablists, $12,273,963 goes to taxing authorities, over 40 percent. The individual damage: Jamie Shaevel, an LED lighting company owner in Santa Monica who finished seventh for $1.5 million, pays $598,373 federal and $157,127 to California for a 50.4 percent burden, the worst at the table. Michael Gagliano of New Jersey loses 48.4 percent of $2.75 million. Lauri Saaskilahti, Finnish, resident in Barcelona, is exempted by the US-Spain treaty and then owes Spain roughly $2,773,000 on his $6 million, a 46.2 percent haircut. Mario Boos of Volgelsheim, France eats the French top rate of 45 percent plus a 3 percent surtax over 250,000 euros. Lucas Jumalon, in Washington state, which has no income tax until one arrives in 2028, pays federal income tax and self-employment tax for $3,990,826, or 39.9 percent, leaving $6,009,176. Han Feng in Houston pays 39.5 percent. Evagoras Evagorou of Cyprus lands at 35 percent via a 30 percent IRS withholding plus 5 percent at home. Greg Mueller of Vancouver and Rami Hammoud of Montreal both come out best at a flat 30 percent IRS withholding, with Fox noting that Mueller's situation depends on an unresolved dispute between the Canada Revenue Agency and Quebec's tax agency over whether professional poker players owe income tax, and on whether Mueller, 55, is genuinely semi-retired. Chaffin adds that Fox's figures ignore backing deals entirely and that Americans are now operating under the One Big Beautiful Bill gambling provisions that took effect in January, capping loss deductions at 90 percent. Card Player notes the other 1,277 players who cashed owe more on top.
Why it mattersRun the two Canadians against the Californian. Rami Hammoud finished sixth for $1.75 million and keeps $1,228,000. Jamie Shaevel finished seventh for $1.5 million and keeps $744,500. That is a $250,000 gap in gross prize money turning into a $483,500 gap in real money, entirely because one man lives in Montreal and the other lives in Santa Monica. Poker is the only sport where the leaderboard and the payroll disagree this violently, and the WSOP publishes the leaderboard. The other number worth sitting with: the 90 percent loss deduction cap is now live, which means an American pro can book a break-even year on paper and still owe. Chaffin notes some of these nine may keep playing this fall specifically to manage the taxable income, which is a genuinely strange sentence about a game. Efforts to roll the provision back have gone nowhere.
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Lucas Jumalon has signed with Poker Royalty as an ambassador, per PokerNews' Connor Richards on Saturday. The Las Vegas agency will represent him across sponsorships, endorsements, appearances, licensing and brand partnerships. Its existing roster includes Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Alex Foxen, Kristen Foxen, Josh Arieh, David Williams and Jeremy Becker. Jumalon in the release: 'It's a pure feeling of euphoria. My goal now is to be a real ambassador for this game, someone who brings new people to the table and makes poker look as good as it felt to win. Poker Royalty has done that for the biggest names in the sport for over twenty years, and I can't think of a better team to help me get there.' Poker Royalty CEO Brian Balsbaugh: 'Lucas put on a performance that the poker world won't forget. Wire-to-wire chip leader, 9,208 entrants, $10 million, at 22 years old. We're honored to be in his corner as he steps into everything that comes next.' Jumalon separately told PokerNews: 'I love this game so much and it's given me so much and given me so many great people. I just can't be more thankful.'
Why it mattersEvery Main Event champion says the ambassador thing in the first 48 hours. The tell is what they do in the first week, and signing with representation is the single most concrete signal available that a 22-year-old intends to still be visible in 2028. Poker Royalty has been doing this since the boom and its roster is the establishment, which cuts both ways: Jumalon now shares an agency with the two most famous players alive and will be positioned accordingly, whether or not that is what a Grand Canyon University graduate from Spokane actually wants his twenties to look like. Worth noting alongside story one, since he cleared $6,009,176 after tax rather than $10 million. Agency percentages come off the same pile. The real test is still whether he shows up for the online series that fires in seven days.
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Selahaddin Bedir won the $5,500 Merit Poker NOIR Series Main Event in Cyprus for $525,000, per PokerNews' Stewart Morrison. The tournament drew 769 entries at the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino and Spa for a $3,608,148 prize pool. The final day started with 13 players and ran 12 hours, including roughly ten hours of nine-handed final table and a heads-up match against Russia's Konstantin Voronin that lasted nearly two hours across three all-ins. Voronin doubled through Bedir twice and got ground back down both times before Bedir held on the third. Fabian Gumz of Germany took third for $257,000. Bedir had finished runner-up in the High Roller at the same venue in April. On the marathon: 'It's hard to play every day from the beginning. Same patience, but feeling very good, very much.' On motivation: poker is 'my business and my hobby' but 'I don't think about money. I just feel good when I go.' He is an accomplished Bridge player and credits the crossover, calling Bridge a 'brain sport.' Celebration plans: 'I think with my kids, my friends. The usual.'
Why it mattersThis is what the poker calendar looks like the week after the WSOP: the biggest Main Event title awarded anywhere on the planet went to a part-time Bridge specialist in Cyprus for a prize that is smaller than what Rami Hammoud paid in withholding. That is not a knock on the NOIR Series, which built a $3.6 million pool from 769 entries and produced a two-hour heads-up match that three separate all-ins failed to resolve. It is a reminder of the size of the hole the WSOP leaves behind every August. Also, quietly, the best quote of the week is a man who just played twelve straight hours for half a million dollars saying he does not think about the money and plans to celebrate by seeing his kids. Put that next to the tax story and the agency signing and you have the full range of what winning at poker looks like.
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The WSOP Circuit at Harrah's Cherokee in Cherokee, North Carolina opened Thursday, August 6 and runs through Monday, August 17, per WSOP.com's own announcement. The headline number is a $2 million guarantee on the Circuit Main Event. Card Player lists the series as the 2026 WSOP Circuit Cherokee (Summer) stop, distinct from the February and May Cherokee stops earlier this year. PokerOrg is carrying live updates from the room. No individual ring winners from this week's series have been published in the sources we checked, and we are not going to name one we have not verified.
Why it mattersCherokee is the best-attended Circuit room in the country and it is running a $2 million guaranteed Main Event during the exact eleven-day window when poker media has decided the season is over. Six days ago the industry was arguing about whether jack-three is a call. Right now several hundred people in western North Carolina are playing for gold rings and the coverage is a preview post. The Circuit is the actual volume business of the WSOP brand, it feeds the Paradise package promotions the operator is currently selling, and it gets treated as filler. Also worth stating plainly: the last WSOP hardware awarded before August 16 will come out of this room, not Las Vegas and not GGPoker.
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Three of the largest events on the annual calendar now overlap almost completely. GGPoker's WSOP Online runs August 16 to September 29 with 33 bracelets and, per Card Player, more than $69 million in guarantees, headlined by the $5,000 Main Event with $25 million guaranteed on September 21. PokerStars' WCOOP, the 25th edition, runs September 6 to 30, per PokerStars' own confirmation reported by EEGaming and Poker News Daily, with the WCOOP Boot Camp having run August 2 to 17 and over $6.5 million guaranteed across 65 events, per PokerNews. And EPT Barcelona, the largest live stop in Europe, runs August 16 to 29 at Casino Barcelona, opening the same day as the WSOP Online series, with a 5,300 euro Main Event and a 100,000 euro Super High Roller. PokerNews reported in July that the CEP Barcelona Main Event is again expected to challenge its own attendance record.
Why it mattersThe online overlap is the interesting part. WCOOP and WSOP Online share 24 days of calendar, and the players who matter most to both, the mid and high stakes multi-table regulars, are a finite population that cannot two-table a $5,000 Main Event and a WCOOP high roller at the same time on the same Sunday. GGPoker's answer is the $30,000 Paradise Super Pass attached to every bracelet, which is a loyalty bribe aimed squarely at the guy deciding where to put his September. PokerStars' answer is a 25th anniversary and the brand. Meanwhile the live version of the same problem is happening in Barcelona from the 16th, which is where a meaningful chunk of the European online field physically goes in August. Somebody's guarantee is going to be the one that gets tested, and the $25 million on September 21 is the largest and most falsifiable number in the pile.
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Per the ESPN broadcast schedule published by Pokerfuse, the 2026 WSOP coverage does not stop at the finale. Edited WSOP episodes are scheduled on ESPN2 with a premiere Monday, August 10 at 9pm and 10pm ET, a re-air at 4am and 5am on the 11th, then 8pm and 9pm on the 13th, 10pm and 11pm on the 15th, and 9pm and 10pm on the 19th. The live final table already aired August 3 on ESPN2 and August 4 and 5 on ESPN, with the finale in a 10:30pm to 1:30am ET window. Lon McEachern and Norman Chad called the edited broadcasts, with Ali Nejad and Nick Schulman on the final table, alongside Jeff Platt, Joe Stapleton, Maria Ho and David Williams. The international package runs through Warner Bros. Discovery on Eurosport, TNT Sports and HBO Max in select markets, plus Abema in Japan and Groupe M6 in France. Nielsen figures for the August 5 finale and the July 28 ESPN2 block still have not been published in any source we checked.
Why it mattersThis is the strangest scheduling artifact of the delayed final table format. ESPN2 will spend the next ten days airing edited episodes of a tournament whose winner has already signed with an agency, done a podcast, and been analyzed by Doug Polk. Anyone tuning in Monday night is watching a mystery whose answer is the first result on Google. The delayed format was built to create a promotable event and it did, on August 5, and then left two weeks of tape airing into a vacuum. Whether that matters comes down to a number nobody has published: what the live finale actually drew. The July 21 ESPN2 episodes did 173,000 and 186,000 viewers, which is the only baseline anyone has. Fifth consecutive brief asking for the finale number.
Still leads the official WSOP race out of Las Vegas, 22 points clear of Naoya Kihara and 29 clear of Alex Foxen. His eighth place in the $25,000 H.O.R.S.E. High Roller on the final day of the series is what decided the Vegas order. The leaderboard had still not visibly refreshed with Main Event points in our sources today, now the third consecutive brief flagging it. Thirty-three online bracelets from August 16 and 20 more in Paradise mean the race is nowhere near settled.
The margin is smaller than a single mid-field cash. Whoever commits to the heavier online schedule from August 16 to September 29 likely leads this race into December, and the September calendar collision with WCOOP and EPT Barcelona means that commitment is now an actual choice rather than a default.
Slipped from first to third on the final day of the Vegas leg. Also, as of this weekend, a Poker Royalty stablemate of the new world champion. Neither he nor Kihara nor Deeb has publicly committed to a Paradise schedule.
Signed with Poker Royalty on Saturday, joining a roster that includes Negreanu, Hellmuth, both Foxens, Arieh and David Williams. Keeps $6,009,176 of the $10 million after federal income tax and self-employment tax, per Russ Fox. The ambassador talk gets its first real test in seven days when 33 online bracelets go live.
Seventh for $1.5 million, keeps $744,500. The 50.4 percent combined federal, self-employment and California bill is the highest percentage of the nine and is the number every California-based pro should be looking at before they decide where to live next year.
Won the only Main Event title awarded anywhere this week after a 12-hour final day in Cyprus, having finished runner-up in the same venue's High Roller in April. An accomplished Bridge player who says he does not think about the money.