"Definitely Not Defending" says 2024 WSOP Main Event Champ Jonathan Tamayo

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Jul 05, 2025 3 min read Last updated Jul 06, 2025

One year ago, Jonathan Tamayo conquered the biggest stage in poker, defeating a record-shattering field to win the 2024 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event and the $10,000,000 payday that came with it.

Today? He’s just one of more than 8,000 players battling through Day 1 flights of the 2025 WSOP Main Event, all with the same dream he made reality last summer and the same near-impossible task of running 60,000 starting chips into hundreds of millions by the final hand.

PokerNews caught up with Tamayo — who qualified into this summer's Main Event for $160 — to talk about life as poker’s reigning world champion, what’s changed, and why winning back-to-back Main Events feels borderline absurd.

Tamayo on "Absurd" Main Event Win

"It’s a lot more freeing," Tamayo told PokerNews about returning to the Main Event after winning it. "You don’t sweat the high-equity spots as much in a results-oriented way. You still focus on the process, but if something bad happens, it’s not the end of the world. That’s just MTT poker, it’s hard to replicate big spots."

Last year, Tamayo entered the Main on Day 1d, and he’s back on the same flight again, hoping for a repeat.

"I looked at my starting stack of 60,000 chips and thought, ‘You’ve got to turn that into just over 600 million to win the Main Event.’ Once you realize that, you understand how absurd it is. But there’s always a shot."

There was still a wave of relief for Tamayo when he finally closed it out heads-up.

"I just didn’t want to come second," he said. "There’s no amount of money that could have relieved the tilt of having to stare at the other guy's banner. But I'm definitely not defending this year!"

"Regressing to the Mean"

It’s been a challenging summer, by his own admission, but twelve months on from what he calls the biggest win of his career — and possibly his life — Tamayo is at peace with the swings.

"Sitting down is the first step of a thousand"

"I'm down about $100,000 to $125,000," he said. "But you know what? If regressing to the mean after winning the Main Event looks like that, then I’m OK with it. My life doesn’t suck!"

Now back playing in the early levels of the Main, Tamayo has had time to settle in, and he’s already noticing how things are different.

"When I sat down, it was like, ‘Oh crap, he’s here!’” he said, laughing. "I’ve already seen a couple of in-game adjustments from people, deviating from their usual strategy just because I’m here."

"But that’s what the Main Event is. Sitting down is the first step of a thousand."

Calum has been a part of the PokerNews team since September 2021 after working in the UK energy sector. He played his first hand of poker in 2017 and immediately fell in love with the game. Calum has written for various poker outlets but found his home at PokerNews, where he has contributed to various articles and live updates, providing insights and reporting on major poker events, including the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

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Based in the United Kingdom, Will started working for PokerNews as a freelance live reporter in 2015 and joined the full-time staff in 2019. He now works as Managing Editor. He graduated from the University of Kent in 2017 with a B.A. in German. He also holds an NCTJ Diploma in Sports Journalism.

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