It is the dream of every professional poker player to end up winning the World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event and that dream came true for Joe McKeehen on the 10th of November 2015 and gave him a massive payout of $7.68 Million.
McKeehen who is also known as ‘Average Joe’ on the poker circuit has been playing poker for a number of years and had earned close to $2 million in live earnings before his WSOP win.
The road to the WSOP final was a long and tedious one as a total of 6,420 players entered the event after paying $10,000 for a crack at the main event.
McKeehen made it to the November Nine list of finalists and realized that he had a tough bunch of players to beat. However, the Philadelphia native had three fantastic days in a row which saw him accumulate more chips than all the rest of the players and he continued his good run of form into the final day. In the end he ended up defeating his friend Josh Beckley and was delighted to be the eventual winner of the 2015 WSOP main event. Beckley finished in second place and took home $4,470,896 while Neil Blumenfield finished in third place and took home $3,398,298.
McKeehen would later book a Las Vegas suite and celebrate his victory with family, friends and Josh Beckley as well. In a statement, McKeehen said
I always had confidence in my ability to make money and make a living playing poker. Winning the WSOP is the greatest achievement in the sport, and I’m very happy to have done it. I’m very happy the final table went as smooth as it did. The way the cards came out, it didn’t seem like I had too many tough decisions and when I did, I generally made the right ones. It was definitely easier than facing adversity and battling. It was just my day for three days in a row.
Winning the 2015 WSOP main event will change McKeehen’s life forever as it has given him celebrity status on the poker circuit and will definitely result in a number of sponsorships. The victory for average Joe hasn’t yet fully sunk in and he does not have any specific plans yet on how he is going to spend his $7 million.
