The company you keep
It seems Nines are lucky this summer. On Tuesday, Shaun Deeb won 2026 World Series of Poker Event #74: $1,500 8-Game Mix for his ninth career WSOP bracelet. His accomplishment comes just a day after Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi won his ninth WSOP title and just a few days after Benny Glaser won his.
Interestingly, Deeb, Mizrachi, and Glaser were the only three players going into this year’s WSOP who had exactly eight career bracelets. Now they have all moved up in the lifetime rankings together and sit beside Erik Seidel and Johnny Moss with nine. Nick Schulman is now the only player with eight career bracelets, nabbing his eighth about three weeks ago.
The only players with more than nine are Phil Hellmuth (17), Phil Ivey, (11), Doyle Brunson (10), and Johnny Chan (10).
Shaun Deeb is arguably the most committed World Series of Poker tournament grinder out there, always gunning for the WSOP Player of the Year title. And sure enough, with his win, he has climbed to the top of the leaderboard with 2,816 points, edging ahead of William Fox, who has 2,721. Double bracelet winner Naoya Kihara is in third place with 2,631 points.
Deeb has won Player of the Year twice, in 2018 and 2025.
Sights set even higher
His latest victory comes as no surprise to the man himself. For years, he has said he will eventually overtake Phil Hellmuth for the most bracelets of all time. In a post-tournament interview with PokerNews, he reiterated that, saying, “Show up every day, play every event, play every buy-in, and sometimes you win.”
He’s sticking to that, too. Just 15 minutes after shaking hands with runner-up Dean Joe, he was sitting at the table in yet another event, starting a possible advance toward his tenth bracelet.
What’s wild is that Deeb could easily have hit that double-digit bracelet mark this year (maybe “easily” isn’t the best word, considering we’re talking about winning WSOP hardware). He has three second-place finishes in 2026, two at WSOP Europe and one a couple weeks ago in the $3,000 9-Game Mix event. He was *this* close to looking up only at Hellmuth in the all-time bracelet rankings.
But he’s not bothered by it. In that same interview, he shrugged at the notion of getting the proverbial monkey off his back, saying, “I know the variance in poker. I could easily have lost this heads-up match, could have won the other ones.”
So it’s on to the next for Shaun Deeb with a new, shiny gold WSOP bracelet in his hand and $181,625 in fresh winnings in his ledger.
2026 World Series of Poker – Event #74: $1,500 8-Game Mix Final Table Results
- Shaun Deeb – $181,625
- Dean Joe – $120,570
- Fu Wong – $81,530
- Blaz Zerjav – $56,230
- Itsuko Yoroi – $39,570
- Patrick Mahoney – $28,420
Image credit: WSOP
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