Editor
Jesse Lonis is unarguably one of the best No-Limit Hold’em players in the world right now. He is currently ranked as the #1 GPI player in the world and is seemingly crushing every event he enters. But how does that translate to his odds of winning the 2025 WSOP Main Event?
This discussion comes on the heels of posted odds listing Lonis as a 16:1 favorite to win the Main Event. Lonis posted on X, perhaps half-jokingly, that he thought his actual odds might be twice as good.
Granted, Lonis has been dominating recently, having won a Triton title in Montenegro and an EPT title in Monte Carlo. However, those odds still seem extremely low for any player when talking about a tournament the size of the main event, the field for which exceeded 10,000 players last year.
Lonis’s Advantages and Obstacles
The slow marathon-like structure of the Main Event means that the best players hold a greater edge than in other events. Added to that is the fact that the Main Event has a soft field, as it attracts a large number of first-time WSOP players.
Lonis himself has good experience in the Main Event as well. He finished in 176th place last year, which is a very deep run for a year with record attendance.
But despite all the advantages that Lonis will have, it seems unlikely that 16:1 is a good reflection of his actual chances in such a large field, given the extreme variance of tournament poker.
Lonis is one of the best in the world and clearly knows how to win at Texas Hold’em. However, it’s worth noting that all of his biggest wins are in high-stakes, small-field events. Many of those were in tournaments with fewer than 100 entries.
The largest tournament field he has ever won was a 2022 MSPT Venetian Deepstack event that had 537 entries, a far cry from the 10,000 of the Main Event.
How Often do Top GPI-Rated Players Win?
There are too many variables to come up with exact odds. However, to get a sense for how likely the top players are to win, we can look at Main Event champions over the modern history of the event. How many of those were top contenders, and how many were relative unknowns until their big win?
If a top-seeded player were actually 16:1 to win, we would likely have seen that happen in the past 20 years. And yet, we haven’t. In fact, we’ve never seen a winner who was in the Top 40 before their victory.
Many recent winners were known names before their win. However, even some of the most famous were not in GPI’s top 100 at the time. Koray Aldemir (the 2021 champ) had some prominent high-stakes wins and experience, while Daniel Weinman (2023) had already won previous WSOP bracelets. Neither was in the GPI top 100.
According to my research through the GPI historical rankings, the only player that appears to have been in the GPI top 100 before his win was Martin Jacobson in 2014. He was #49 GPI heading into the 2014 WSOP and rose as high as #16 by the end of July before his eventual victory in November of that year.
Based on this data, it is safe to say that while highly-ranked GPI players may have a skill advantage, it does not translate to any certainty of winning the Main Event. If the world’s best were even in the ballpark of 100:1, let alone 16:1, then we would see the Main Event won by a top 100 player more often than not.
What Are Lonis’s True Odds?
Lonis clearly has a much better chance of winning than the average player in the field. Even if he’s not a big-field specialist, it’s probably fair to say he’s among the 10 or 20 players with the best shot at winning. All of the best players in the world will play. That includes the all-time top bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who confirmed he will play the Main Event after initially saying he wouldn’t.
Statistically, the average player has a 1 in 10,000 chance if that’s how many people are in the event. Beginners would have even longer odds, while skilled players might be several times better than that.
I would estimate that the players with the biggest advantage in skill and experience might come in somewhere more like 500:1. That includes Lonis and a handful of other top players I would put on equal footing with him in this style of tournament.
