Did it feel like 52 days and 100 events to you?
Whether you were in action in Las Vegas, or watching on from afar, for some the 2026 World Series of Poker will appear as a blur in the rearview mirror, a festival of the game we love that ended too quickly.
For others, the memories may be viewed as more of a long-haul challenge than a flash in the pan. Expensive food, long lines for the restroom and daily battles with variance, better players, or our own shortcomings.
But whatever the 2026 WSOP means to you personally, it was without doubt a truly memorable series from which it was hard to look away.
As the dust begins to settle, here are five things from the past summer we’ll certainly remember with a smile.
The WSOP star who’s not allowed to play
He’s under 21, won’t speak English at the table and has no money, but the main reason Chief can’t play in the WSOP is the awkward fact that he’s not actually human.
No, Chief is a golden retriever and so finds himself cruelly banned from playing any WSOP events, even badogi — sorry, badugi — but that didn’t stop him becoming one of the most photographed stars of the series.
Alongside his good friend Ben Ditsch, Chief spent many happy hours watching the feature tables in the Paris ballroom, where he seemingly posed for more selfies with fans than Daniel Negreanu.
He’s a good boy, alright, and even more so when you realize the very special role he plays in Ditsch’s life: that of regularly saving it.
Ditsch has a rare cortisol disorder that requires constant moritoring and medicating, and Chief happens to be one of just 75 dogs in the country that can detect dropping cortisol levels and alert his owner.
PokerOrg’s Mike Patrick spent some time with the pair, and the result is one of the stories of the summer.
The incredible disappearing man
Mike also managed to grab some face time with Amit Agarwal, a man who asked himself a question that presumably few, if any, have asked before:
'If I pay $10,000 to play the Main Event, do I actually have to be there?'
At the tables Agarwal adheres to the rules of the game, but the rest of the time he seems content to follow his own path.
Getting bored running up a big stack in the Main Event? Go see Obsession at the cinema.
Back the next day, but getting bored again? Go see Obsession again.
We all have methods to handle lapses in concentration, from headphones and music to podcasts or even multi-tabling in an online event, but few take the option of simply standing up and abandoning their stack.
As he told Mike, “I’m devising my own structure.”
Age is just a number
We’re not 100% sure who the oldest person is to ever play the WSOP, but we do know the oldest player to make a final table.
That was Perry Green, who at the age of 90 made the FT of the $1,500 Omaha 8 or Better event back in late May.
Many of today’s crop of poker whizkids marvel at the idea of living pre-internet, mobile phones or social media. What must they think of a time before transistors, personal computers or satellites?
The world Perry Green was born into didn’t have poker solvers; it didn’t even have pocket calculators.
Green was there in the early days of the WSOP, winning three bracelets between 1976-79. He didn’t add another in 2026, but he did finish 6th for $30K.
We spoke to him afterwards, when he told us, “As long as I can walk from my room to the casino, I’ll be playing.”
Turning $550 into $1 million in a few seconds
The $550 Mini Mystery Millions tourney was event #1, the very first tournament on the schedule. Bankrolls were intact, energy levels were high, and the crowds were hungry to get stuck in.
So hungry, in fact, that over 20,000 players took on the challenge. It ended on June 1 with victory for Philip Chun, who banked $400K for the win. But for us the standout moment came the day before.
With the tournament in the money the mystery bounty prizes were being pulled, and although two $250K bounties went very early in proceedings, the top bounty of $1M was still in there somewhere as afternoon turned to evening.
Up stepped Andrew Shelton, whose previous biggest cash was $10K. In the time it took to open an envelope, he bumped that up x100, becoming an instant millionaire.
Shelton had fired just the one bullet in the tournament, and had 100% of his winnings.
When we caught up with him right afterwards, he was still in shock. We asked the question, would he play any more events this summer, now he was rich?
His answer was one for the ages. Check it out below.
Where there’s a will…
Michael ‘The Mayor’ Hughes loved poker, and loved his friends.
When he took on a particularly dangerous job in war-torn Afghanistan, training people there to run prisons, he had a suspicion it could be his last assignment.
We know this because he left instructions in his will that, should he not return alive, he bequeathed $10K for his friends to send one of them to the WSOP Main Event.
Tragically, his foresight was all-too-accurate. Hughes was killed by a suicide bomber, and eventually his grieving friends convened to play a satellite, funded by their late pal's last wish, to decide who would head to Las Vegas to honor his memory and compete in the Big One.
Nason Weller won the seat, but didn’t travel alone, joined on the pilgrimage by many of Hughes’ friends.
“He provided us with a once-in-a-lifetime experience, for all of us to be together,” Weller told PokerOrg. “He’s on my mind constantly here.”
Those are just five of the stories we won’t soon forget from the 2026 WSOP, and we haven’t even touched on Gus Hansen juggling his way through tournament breaks, Martin Kabrhel multi-tabling two tournaments in two different rooms, or that one guy who sparked up a $3K cigarette at the table.
What were some of your best stories from the 2026 WSOP? Have your say in the comments.
