Poker Leaderboard: WPT Main Event Titles

There are 188 players who have won a World Poker Tour main tour title since the first WPT event was taken down by Gus Hansen at the Bellagio back in 2002. Only 32 of those players have managed to win multiple main tour titles in the 19 years since.

The all-time leader in main tour titles for the WPT is Darren Elias, with four such wins to his name. The 34-year-old poker professional earned his first victory on the tour in September of 2014 by taking down the Borgata Poker Open main event for $843,744. Less than two months later he won the WPT Caribbean main event for another $127,680. Elias’ third victory came in the 2017 WPT Fallsview Poker Classic, which saw him earn another $335,436. In the spring of 2018, he became the first player to ever win four main tour titles by emerging victorious in the WPT Bobby Baldwin Classic, banking another $387,580. The New Jersey native also leads the tour in final tables (12) and overall cashes (41).

There are six players who can join Elias at the top of the leaderboard with another win on the WPT. Brian Altman joined that three-time winner’s club in June by overcoming a field of 1,165 entries to win the 2021 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Tampa main event for $613,225. Prior to this win, Altman had already secured a unique distinction in the WPT history books as the first player to ever win the same main event twice. Altman’s first title came in the 2015 Lucky Hearts Poker Open. He defeated a field of 1,027 entries that year for $723,008, and went on to win that exact event five years later, outlasting 843 entries to earn another $482,636. With his latest title, Altman joins the likes of Elias, Carlos Mortensen, Gus Hansen, Anthony Zinno, Eric Afriat, and Chino Rheem as one of just seven players to have won three or more WPT victories.

Two-time WPT champion James Carroll recently had a chance to join the three-timers club, but ultimately fell just short when he finished third in the 2020 L.A. Poker Classic. The tournament played out in May after being delayed for more than a year due to the pandemic. Though he didn’t win, he did manage to improve on his seventh-place finish in that event from the year prior.