John Cynn is the 2018 WSOP Main Event Champion

Cynn took home $8.8 million, while former champion Joe Cada finished 5th for $2,150,000.

After a painful 11th place finishes in 2016, John Cynn returned to the Main Event to take revenge and made no mistake this time. “Really, neither is supposed to happen, right? To make 11th is insane on its own. And then to win, that’s literally something that you dream of, but just never expect to happen.”

The final day of the $10,000 Main Event lasted for 11 and a half hours, with a marathon 10-hour heads-up battle between Cynn and runner-up Tony Miles - which sets the record for the longest duel in the history of the event. The whole victory took for 10 days, but the $8.8 million first prize and a mark in poker history is probably a great compensation for the exhausting ride.

Cynn, who had been battling against Miles for days, praised his last opponent: “Tony’s an amazing guy,” he started “We’ve been playing next to each other for quite a while now. He plays really well, I think. He put me in a lot of tough spots. Not just hand wise, with his strategy. I probably had to adjust three, four, five, I don’t know how many times. And it seemed like whenever I would adjust he would adjust right back. It was cool because we had moments where we were really going after each other. And we had moments of dead pots.” he added.

Six players returned to the last day. Aram Zobian was the first to be busted as he shoved his short stack holding 8-6 against the Ace-eight of Michael Dyer. The better hand managed to hold and Zobian was out in 6th place for $1.8 million.

The 2009 champ, Joe Cada was getting closer to the achieve an amazing goal. Had he taken down the tournament, Cada would've joined the most elite club in the poker world, the club of the two-time Main Event champions, where seats are only available for the legends of the game: Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan and Stu Ungar, whom all players would be pleased to see their name amongst.

Unfortunately for Joe, he wasn't able to win a flip, when his pocket-tens couldn't manage to hold against the Ace-King of Miles'. Cada got 5th for $2.15 million. The next player out was Nicolas Manion, who got it in with Ace-Ten after getting pretty short and got called by the pocket kings of Cynn's, which managed to hold. Nicolas took home $2.825 million and some delightful memories.

Cynn and Miles were both able to accumulate chips, while Michael Dyer, who started the day with a commanding lead got extremely short. Miles was in the lead with 238.9 million, while Cynn had 128.7 and Dyer only 26.2 million. After an hour of play on Saturday, John took the lead and Dyer was out shortly after. He pushed his remaining stack with Ace-Ten and couldn't find any help against the Ace-Jack of Cynn's. Dyer was out in third place, good for $3,750,000.

Cynn with runner-up Miles

The last two battled back and forth up until Miles made a questionable play in the final hand. He 3-bet before the flop, continued with a small bet on the ♥K♦K♥5 flop and shoved on the ♦8 turn. John tanked for a minute and finally made the call, to experience something all of us would love to: his opponent was all-in and drawing dead in the heads-up for $8.8 million!

Cynn:
Dyer:

John Cynn took home a staggering prize of $8.8 million, while Tony Miles earned $5 million for finishing second.

"I do like to think that I don't need the money to be happy, but at the same time it's practically going to make things a lot easier," Cynn said. "Things I want to do in life, things for my family, and my parents. To my parents, this is money that they could have never imagined. It'll definitely be life-changing."

Final results:
1 – John Cynn - $8,800,000
2 – Tony Miles - $5,000,000
3 – Michael Dyer - $3,750,000
4 – Nicolas Manion - $2,825,000
5 – Joe Cada - $2,150,000
6 – Aram Zobian - $1,800,000
7 – Alex Lynskey - $1,500,000
8 – Artem Metalidi - $1,250,000
9 – Antoine Labat - $1,000,000