By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · June 25, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen
The World Series of Poker on Wednesday named eight finalists for the 2026 Poker Hall of Fame, a class headlined by Isai Scheinberg, the Canadian-based software engineer who founded PokerStars in 2001 and remained its driving force for nearly two decades, and a record five first-time nominees who together account for one of the deepest live tournament eras in poker history. Inductees will be announced from the stage of the WSOP Main Event final table on ESPN over the August 3 to 5, 2026 broadcast window, and at least one inductee is guaranteed: if no candidate receives the required two-thirds threshold from the surviving Hall of Fame members, the player with the highest total vote count is automatically inducted.
The eight finalists, in order presented by the WSOP, are Scheinberg, Jason Koon, Justin Bonomo, Isaac Haxton, Shaun Deeb, Scott Seiver, Chris Moorman and Mike Matusow. The list collectively accounts for thirty-one WSOP gold bracelets, more than US$300 million in combined live tournament earnings and the founding of the platform that drove the post-2003 poker boom and continues to operate the largest regulated online poker network in the world. Scheinberg's nomination, his first as a finalist, was the most discussed element of the announcement and a story with direct Ontario implications given PokerStars Ontario's position as one of the six AGCO-licensed online poker brands available to players physically located in the province.
The Scheinberg case
Scheinberg, who emigrated to Canada from Latvia in the late 1980s and built PokerStars from a small Toronto-area software studio into a global operator that processed roughly 35 percent of the world's online poker hands at its 2010 peak, is on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time despite having been eligible for the past decade. His Hall of Fame candidacy has historically been complicated by an April 2011 US Department of Justice indictment that ultimately resulted in a US$50 million fine paid by Scheinberg in 2020 and acceptance of a guilty plea for bank fraud and gambling-related violations stemming from the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Scheinberg, his son Mark and the Stars Group sold PokerStars to Amaya Gaming for US$4.9 billion in 2014 and the platform has since changed hands twice, first to The Stars Group's merger with Flutter Entertainment in 2020 and now operates as part of FanDuel Group's combined poker operation in Ontario alongside the FanDuel Poker brand that launched in the province on June 3, 2026.
His induction would carry symbolic weight for the regulated Canadian market. PokerStars Ontario, the AGCO-licensed iteration of the platform Scheinberg built, ran ring-fenced cash games and tournaments continuously from April 2022 through May 7, 2026, when the brand briefly shut down to migrate technology stacks ahead of the FanDuel Poker Ontario launch. The migration produced one of the largest regulated-market disruptions of the iGaming Ontario era and surfaced longstanding questions about the platform's technical infrastructure that Scheinberg himself spent years building. Coverage of the migration and the FanDuel/PokerStars relationship is available in our article on the PokerStars/FanDuel Ontario migration and the FanDuel Poker Ontario June 3 launch.
Five first-time finalists, one record class
The 2026 ballot's most striking feature is the five first-time finalists: Koon, Bonomo, Haxton, Seiver and Moorman. The 2025 ballot featured one first-time nominee; the previous record (four first-time nominees) was set in 2014. The 2026 class is, by that measure, the deepest first-time-eligible cohort in the Hall of Fame's 47-year history.
Jason Koon, 41, of West Virginia, holds two WSOP bracelets and over US$71 million in live tournament earnings, second only to Bryn Kenney on the all-time live cash list. Koon, a former Division I track sprinter, transitioned to poker after his collegiate career and built his bankroll through cash-game grinding in West Virginia and Atlantic City before becoming one of the founding members of the modern high-roller tour. He is the founding ambassador for Triton Poker's Ambassador program and a fixture of the global super-high-roller circuit.
Justin Bonomo, 41, of Virginia, holds three WSOP bracelets, including the 2018 US$1,000,000 One Drop title that produced his US$10 million payday and briefly placed him atop the all-time live cash list with US$57 million. Bonomo, an Atlantic City native who began as a teenage online prodigy, has spent more time at the top of the all-time money list than any active player and is widely regarded as one of the most technically accomplished tournament professionals of his generation.
Isaac Haxton, 39, of New York, captured his first WSOP gold bracelet in 2025 in the $25,000 Heads-Up Championship after fifteen years of high-roller deep runs, including the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure runner-up that produced his original mainstream attention. He is considered the standard-bearer for the analytical, GTO-driven generation of high-stakes tournament play.
Scott Seiver, 41, of Ohio, holds seven WSOP bracelets, second among finalists on the 2026 ballot behind Deeb's eight. His range across no-limit hold'em, pot-limit Omaha and mixed-game championships gives him a unique profile as a multi-format winner across the WSOP gauntlet. Chris Moorman, 41, of the United Kingdom, is widely considered the most accomplished online tournament player of all time, with one WSOP gold bracelet and a record sixty WCOOP/SCOOP titles on the PokerStars network during the 2008 to 2016 online poker peak.
The 2026 finalists in summary
| Finalist | WSOP Bracelets | Notable Distinction | First-Time Finalist? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shaun Deeb | 8 | Two-time WSOP Player of the Year (2018, 2025) | No |
| Scott Seiver | 7 | Multi-format winner across NLH, PLO and mixed games | Yes |
| Jason Koon | 2 | Over US$71M in live earnings; Triton Poker ambassador | Yes |
| Isaac Haxton | 1 | 2025 $25K Heads-Up Championship; GTO standard-bearer | Yes |
| Justin Bonomo | 3 | 2018 US$1M One Drop winner (US$10M) | Yes |
| Mike Matusow | 4 | "The Mouth"; Poker Boom-era television icon | No |
| Chris Moorman | 1 | Most accomplished online tournament player of all time | Yes |
| Isai Scheinberg | 0 | Founder, PokerStars; Canadian-based industry pioneer | No |
2026 Poker Hall of Fame finalists. Source: WSOP.com and PokerNews.
Voting is conducted by surviving Hall of Fame members, each of whom may submit up to four votes from the eight-finalist ballot. Any finalist receiving two-thirds of the cast votes is inducted; if no finalist meets the threshold, the candidate with the highest total is the sole inductee for 2026. Past ballots have produced multi-candidate classes (Daniel Negreanu and Crandell Addington in 2014) and single inductees (Eli Elezra in 2024). The decision is shaped, in part, by which finalists have built recent industry presence; Scheinberg's 2020 plea, while disqualifying in the eyes of some voters, has not historically prevented Hall of Fame induction (Stu Ungar was inducted in 2001 despite a criminal record).
Josh Reichard captures Event #62 for US$555,198
The day's bracelet went to American mixed-game regular Josh Reichard, who defeated the 1,609-entry field of Event #62, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em, for US$555,198 and his first WSOP gold bracelet at the Horseshoe Las Vegas. The 30-year-old Massachusetts native, who broke through with deep runs at the 2024 World Poker Tour Borgata Open and 2025 Lucky Hearts Poker Open, defeated American Jonathan Pelevsky heads-up after a brief deal discussion that did not produce a chop. Reichard's title is the second straight 2026 WSOP bracelet for a player making his fifth or sixth career WSOP cash without a previous victory, joining Allen Shen's June 2026 Event #43 result at Playground Poker Club.
Event #62 drew the smallest open-event field of any WSOP $2,500 tournament since the 2022 schedule, with 1,609 entries against the US$3,820,000 prize pool. The relative modesty of the count reflects the post-Mystery-Millions schedule compression now in effect; the $2,500 No-Limit was traditionally a Day-Two event of the summer schedule but has been pushed to Week 6 in the current calendar.
PPC final table continues
Event #60, the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, restarted Thursday at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time inside the new WSOP Thunderdome arena at the Horseshoe Las Vegas, with six players returning. Benny Glaser entered the day with the chip lead at 8,610,000; Phil Ivey, 11-time WSOP bracelet winner, second in chips at 5,135,000 with a 12th-bracelet Hall-of-Fame-equivalent storyline on the line; Maxx Coleman 5,565,000; Josh Arieh 5,265,000 (2002 PPC predecessor winner, five career bracelets); Kristopher Tong 5,180,000; and Paul Volpe 2,725,000 (2019 PPC champion, three career bracelets). At time of writing, the final table had not yet produced an official champion; the eventual winner takes US$1,343,764, the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy and a WSOP gold bracelet. The PokerGO live stream of the final table publishes on the WSOP YouTube channel on a roughly two-and-a-half-hour delay.
Other Thursday news
Event #66, the $1,000 Tag Team No-Limit Hold'em, opened Thursday afternoon with American Bryan Chen leading the field, the second consecutive day a Chen-surnamed player has held a chip lead at the 2026 WSOP after Bo Chen led the Day 4 Millionaire Maker chip counts on Tuesday. The Tag Team format, in its eighth year on the WSOP schedule, allows teams of two to four players to share a single tournament entry; teammates may swap in and out at any point during the level, with the team's chip stack maintained continuously. The 2026 Tag Team event drew 1,254 entries with 322 surviving the first session.
Event #65, the $1,500 Freezeout No-Limit Hold'em, played its Day 3 session Thursday. Quebec native Frederic Normand, the year's first Canadian bracelet winner in Event #21 ($1,500 PLO Hi-Lo, US$235,377), entered Day 3 with 284,000 chips. Day 3 published chip-count data was not yet available at time of writing; Day 4 plays Friday with the eventual winner collecting approximately US$502,418 against the US$3,489,200 prize pool generated by 2,617 entries.
Antonio Esfandiari, the 2012 US$1,000,000 One Drop winner, advanced through Day 3 of the WSOP Main Event with a top-10 stack according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The Main Event Week 6 schedule continues into July, with the final table broadcast scheduled for ESPN August 3 to 5, the same days as the Poker Hall of Fame announcement.
Ontario implications
Scheinberg's potential Hall of Fame induction would arrive at a moment of meaningful change for the brand he founded in Ontario. PokerStars Ontario, after a brief technology-stack migration outage in May, returned to the AGCO-licensed market on June 3, 2026 as part of the joint FanDuel/PokerStars Ontario poker product. The combined operation is now the second-largest regulated Ontario poker brand by daily cash-game traffic, behind only GGPoker Ontario. A Scheinberg induction would, in the words of one industry observer at the announcement Wednesday, "close a long chapter of unfinished Hall of Fame business and validate a Canadian-based industry pioneer whose ten-year arc as the head of the world's largest online poker site reshaped the modern game."
Ontario players watching the Poker Hall of Fame announcement can follow the broadcast on ESPN. The regulated Ontario market overview is on the best poker sites in Ontario page; specific reviews of the Ontario PokerStars and FanDuel Poker products are at the PokerStars Ontario review, and the WSOP Super Circuit Canada qualifiers operating in August on GGPoker Ontario are covered at GGPoker Ontario.
The Canadian summer to date
The 2026 series Canadian-flag tally remains at three gold bracelets and US$2,395,570 in combined first-place prize money. With Frederic Normand still alive in Event #65 and Alex Livingston's PPC cash now official, the total notable Canadian cashes figure for the summer will approach US$3 million by the end of the week.
| Player | Event | Result | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kristen Foxen | #19 $25K High Roller NLH | 1st (bracelet) | $1,773,083 |
| Christopher Alcindor | #22 $1,500 Big O | 1st (bracelet) | $387,110 |
| Frederic Normand | #21 $1,500 PLO Hi-Lo | 1st (bracelet) | $235,377 |
| Clayton Mozdzen | #37 $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. | 2nd | $122,206 |
| Alex Livingston (Halifax, NS) | #60 $50K PPC | 7th to 15th (TBD) | est. $50K-$150K |
| Thomas Taylor (Medicine Hat, AB) | #52 $3,000 Nine Game Mix | 4th | $76,510 |
| Elliot Smith | #49 $2,500 Freezeout NLH | 7th | $75,390 |
| Daniel Negreanu | #47 $25,000 PLO High Roller | 26th | $69,531 |
| Gianluca Cedolia (Toronto) | #53 $1,500 Five Card PLO | 5th | $66,610 |
| Orlando Moretti (Bolton, ON) | #43 $800 Deepstack NLH | 6th | $64,992 |
| Frederic Normand | #65 $1,500 Freezeout NLH | Day 3 in progress | still alive |
Notable Canadian results, 2026 WSOP, through Thursday evening June 25. Source: WSOP.com, PokerNews and the Hendon Mob.
What to watch Friday
Two threads continue Friday. The PPC final table, if not concluded Thursday night, restarts Friday afternoon Pacific. Event #65, the $1,500 Freezeout, plays Day 4 with Frederic Normand still in the field. Event #66, the $1,000 Tag Team, plays Day 2. Event #63, the $1,000 Mystery Millions, completes its multi-flight Day 1D, with cumulative entries expected to clear ten thousand by close of registration. Event #67, the $1,500 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em, opens Friday afternoon. The WSOP Main Event continues into Week 6.
Ontario players watching from home can follow the live updates on PokerNews, WSOP.com and the PokerGO live stream. The regulated Ontario market overview is on the best poker sites in Ontario page; the WSOP Super Circuit Canada qualifiers operating in August are covered on the GGPoker Ontario page; and the four-week tournament guide is at Ontario poker tournament schedule.