With all the chips in the middle – 344,500,000 of them – the players had done everything they could.
Now the cards would talk, and Daniel Weinman had the best of it. On a 
board, Weinman had top pair with the 
kicker. Steven Jones also had top pair, but he would need to pair his 
kicker or he would come second in the biggest WSOP Main Event of all time.
This would definitely be the biggest pot of their lives. First prize was $12,100,000. The runner-up would get $6,500,000. $5,600,000 was riding on the turn of the final card.
Tyler Mitchell was the man who would decide their fate. He pitched the 
and the rail erupted, with Weinman in the middle of it, head in hands.
It's easy to get blind to numbers in poker, but these moments bring it all back into focus.
Winning the Main Event is the dream for any poker player and Mitchell had been a huge part of it. And that sparked something in him.
Once as a dealer, once as a player
Mitchell isn't a poker player. In his own words he's a "poker fan", but playing the Main Event was now a bucket list item. And one he got to tick off this year.
We caught up with him on the dinner break on Day 3 of what is now the biggest Main Event of all time.
"I'm a Moneymaker kid, and it's been a dream to play the Main Event, let's call it a bucket list thing," Mitchell says. "When I dealt the final hand of the Main Event, I just thought, as a dealer, that's just the most spectacular thing.
"Now I'm looking to transition into a new career, but since I did that, I put money in a little silver container like a little piggy bank of sorts, and saved up over the last eight months. And I'm here just for this. I love it. It's a bucket list thing, with the goal of being at the final table back-to-back, once as a dealer, once as a player."
As poker stories go, that one is a straight-up film script.
Best view in the house
Mitchell had only been dealing for three years when he landed the Main Event spot. He credits Heather Alcorn's Poker Life Dealer Academy for the experience, spring-boarding him into the WSOP where he dealt Jason Koon's bracelet winning hand on just his third day on the job.
"I was lucky to not make any terrible, horrific mistakes on stream," he says. "And I have a lot of people to thank for giving me the opportunity of dealing that final table, because that was the ultimate dream.
"As a poker fan, you're right there at the heart of the action... you're dealing for a bracelet."
Tyler Mitchell on Day 3 of the 2024 WSOP Main EventYou can feel the passion in Mitchell. He claims never to have played bigger than a $1/2 game in his life ("maybe once or twice"). He's got three cashes in low-stakes tourneys that total just over $5,000. So what would it mean to cash in the Main Event?
"What would a cash mean to me? Yeah, that's a good question," Mitchell says, sitting back and going into the tank. "That's, that's big, yeah, that's big."
At this point, Mitchell starts tearing up. "I'm an emotional guy," he admits. "Cashing the World Series of Poker Main Event... and I've made this statement, by the way, this is a one and only, I'm not going to do this again, right? Cashing would be wonderful. My number one goal was to win a pot. Goal number two was to bag. Goal number three, you know, make the money, so after that... there's no goals after that. There's nothing after that.
"Truthfully, though, so I was at my low point with 11,400 on Day 1 with Maria Ho, so I'm lucky to be here. I feel like I'm freerolling. But yeah, cashing would be an amazing thing.
"This is so cool to me, man."
