Christopher Chatman is the World Series Poker 2022 Champion

World Series Poker 2022 everyone as “the recreational player” Christopher Chatman stole the gold bracelet at the end of Day 1 in Event 24. In a surprising event where marquee players went home empty-handed, Chatman bit off $187,770 from the 7-digit prize pool.

Day 1 of the series started with a flip portion with 8 players brought into one sit & go. Only the winners were allowed to get to the second stage, where they could put their wins to good use. From a total of 1,329 entries to the tournament, only 157 were promoted to stage 2.

Surprisingly, the four-time World Series Poker winner Scott Seiver could not even make it to the 157. Seiver’s all 43 shootings ended up failing him. Other notable players like David Peters, Jeff Gross, and Patrick Leonard were also unable to cut Event 24. However, Chatman’s chips led the chart throughout the day, and the gold bracelet winner was never off the chart. 

Chatman seemed as surprised as everyone else because he called himself a recreational player with a job and played cards only once a month. Despite the surprise, he also confirmed that he had experience playing in several tournaments and cash games with his friend Jason over the last few years.

Chatman is from northern Virginia and has been a poker player ever since his high school days. But his interest in professional poker dates back to Chris Moneymaker’s win in the World Series Poker main event in 2003.

Following Chatman, the Israeli player Rafi Elharar secured second place with $116,050 in the bank. Tyler Willse, Ian Steiman, Pete Chen, Austin Apicella, Zach Cheatum, Georgios Sotiropoulos, and Mike Matusow have occupied the subsequent positions in the Top 10. However, none of them were able to cross the $100,000 mark.