Main Event 2025 Runner-Up John Wasnock on How Underdog Skills Changed his Life Forever

One year ago, John Wasnock came second in the WSOP Main Event for $6 million. The amateur player, who had enjoyed the game as a hobby for three decades, suddenly found himself in the spotlight and his life was changed forever.

While Michael Mizrachi, the Main Event winner, was swamped by supporters and inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame by emergency counsel, John walked away to his friends and family to commiserate on being runner-up. Once the dust settled, however, John’s score of $6,000,000 was such that it completely changed his life.

Now 11 months on from the moment that changed his life, we caught up with John to find out how every part of his poker career had led up to his week in the spotlight and what his day-to-day is now like.

The Underdog Story

John Wasnock was almost a complete unknown when he took on the world in the 2025 WSOP Main Event. The yearly tournament, the biggest on the poker calendar, costs $10,000 to play and is a straight freezeout. There are no rebuys, no re-entries and everyone starts on a level playing field. Everyone from amateurs to professionals consider it poker in its purest form and it only takes place once every 12 months in Las Vegas. John told us that playing in the event as an amateur can color how opponents took him on at the felt.

“You get people who play differently against you because they think you’re an amateur and not confident.” He said.

John’s experience in getting to the final table of nine players was not a unique one. Amateurs had won the World Championship in its 56-year history before, but he was still the unfancied player at the felt when the final table was reached. He considered himself under no pressure at all to succeed any further.

“I had already overachieved, and outperformed what many people would have expected.”

Despite getting so far, outlasting 9,726 others wasn’t enough for John and he was as passionate about playing down to a winner as any of the other players at the table in the ‘Thunderdome’ stage at the Horseshoe Las Vegas.

“I still had tremendous fire to actually finish the job and win it, but poker’s poker and bad things will happen. But I wanted to win really bad.”

John came very close to that achievement, getting second place behind the one player who the tournament – and the WSOP in general – seemed to center around, 2025 Poker Hall of Fame inductee Michael ‘Grinder Mizrachi’. Nevertheless, John’s cash of $6,000,000 was by far the more life-changing of the two men’s results, and while the cameras flashed and popped around ‘Grinder’, John was happy to celebrate with friends and family.

Making His Own Fate Come True

Approaching poker as an amateur can be daunting for anyone. But by checking out the reputable sites on which to play online then building your confidence before entering the live arena, anyone can be successful. John believes that the modern player has a much better chance of turning professional than he did when he started playing the game 30 years ago but that his methods assisted in getting him so far at the World Series of Poker.

“The study methods that are out there today can get people up the curve quicker without needing to spend 30 years [playing],” says John. “But having that background of playing as long as I had? That experience and sense of intuition, of reading people, helped.”

The physical toll on John after over a week at the felt was debilitating, but he still felt like he could mostly play his A-Game.

“I was exhausted after playing for eight or nine straight days. It’s not like it was back in the November Nine time where you had a couple of months to look at opponents. But at that point, I had complete confidence; my intuitions were on, I felt like I knew where I was and had played with most of the players at the final table. I had a sense of how everyone was playing.”

With seven players left, John had pocket kings and lost to Michael Mizrachi’s ace-king. Many observers have asked John how he played on so well after that crucial bad beat. His ‘glass half full’ attitude helped him overcome any possibility of tilt and stay in the game.

“I had such a big chip lead even before losing that 75 million had to him, so it wasn’t so damaging to lose,” he says. “I’m second in chips with seven left in the Main Event. Get to work.”

Living the Dream

As an amateur, winning $6 million and retiring from full-time work is the aspiration of hundreds of millions of poker players. John has done just that but such is his relentless drive to win, he said he still looks back on going so close in Las Vegas as a tough experience to get past.

“You are that close to poker immortality that it’s a bitter pill to swallow,” he says. “To know that you got so close, and you did everything you could to get there.”

Becoming retired and now playing more poker than ever, John admitted that it has given him and most crucially, his poker game, a lot more freedom.

“You can be more free to push those edges, to bluff or semi-bluff, because there’s another tournament tomorrow. That’s an advantage that a lot of the pros have over the amateurs.”

John’s life has changed radically, and over the course of our deep dive feature, we found out just how, with his win positively affecting his family and children more than anyone.

“I had always wanted to be able to travel more and play more poker and I’ve been doing that,” he says with a beaming smile. “I’m living the absolute dream, the fantasy everybody has when they sit down at the felt. I’ve got to go to the Bahamas and WSOP Europe and been doing a lot of the circuit stops around the world.”

To find out what John thought about his other rivals at the final table, as well as exactly what he is going to do in the months after this year’s WSOP, watch our full feature interview with John Wasnock below.