WSOP Main Event Repeat Champions

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WSOP Main Event Repeat Champions

Records are meant to be broken, but this one, despite being shared by four players, will stand for all time. These four have won the WSOP Main Event in consecutive years, and it's very unlikely that anyone will ever repeat the feat let alone break the record.

Johnny Moss was the first with an asterisk, winning the World Series of Poker through a vote in 1970 then capturing the championship at the table the next year. Three years later, he added a record third title.

Doyle Brunson was the second, capturing the Main Event in 1976 and 1977.

Stu Ungar was the third, winning in 1980 and 1981, then adding a third sixteen years later to become the only player to win three championships at the table.

Johnny Chan was the last, not only outlasting the field in 1987 and 1988 but coming within two hands of a third in a row in 1989, when he was never able to overcome Phil Hellmuth's heads-up chip lead.

Interestingly, nobody has ever won the WSOP Main Event two or more times without winning twice in a row.

Besides those four repeat champions, only four other players have finished first or second twice: Puggy Pearson, Crandell Addington, T.J. Cloutier, and Dewey Tomko.

Players With Multiple Top-Two WSOP Main Event Finishes

1st	2nd	Player	Years (field size in parentheses)
3	1	Johnny Moss	1st 1970 (7), 1st 1971 (6), 1st 1974 (16); 2nd 1973 (13)
3	0	Stu Ungar	1st 1980 (73), 1st 1981 (75), 1st 1997 (312)
2	1	Doyle Brunson	1st 1976 (22), 1st 1977 (34); 2nd 1980 (73)
2	1	Johnny Chan	1st 1987 (152), 1st 1988 (167); 2nd 1989 (178)
1	1	Puggy Pearson	1st 1973 (13); 2nd 1972 (8; not paid)
0	2	Crandell Addington	2nd 1974 (16; not paid), 2nd 1978 (42)
0	2	T.J. Cloutier	2nd 1985 (140), 2nd 2000 (512)
0	2	Dewey Tomko	2nd 1982 (104), 2nd 2001 (613)

Notes:

While Puggy Pearson is generally credited with a second-place finish in 1971, no evidence backs this up. In Amarillo Slim in a World of Fat People, page 158, Preston goes on record that it was Jack Straus who was the runner-up, while he himself finished third. It's quite possible that Pearson's second place finish in 1972 caused the confusion years later; it's improbable that nobody would mention a three-year run of second-second-first when he took the title in 1973.
Until 1978, runner-up finishes went unrewarded as the Main Event was winner-take-all in those years. Pearson and Addington can be removed from the list if only paid top-two finishes are considered.

Cloutier's and Tomko's accomplishments haven't gone unnoticed, but they seem even more impressive when you note how much bigger their field sizes were.

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