– General Introduction –
Jonathan Duhamel is a Canadian professional poker player. He was born on August 24th, 1987 in Boucherville, Canada.
He’s best known for winning the 2010 WSOP Main Event for a staggering $8.944 million. He has two other bracelets: he won the $111,111 High Roller for One Drop event in 2015, and the €25,600 High Roller No Limit Hold’em event at WSOP Europe the same year.
Overall, he has $18.012 million in live tournament earnings, which puts him in the top 50 on Hendon’s all time money list. He achieved all this great success in the live tournament scene despite the fact that prior to his Main Event win, he focused on live and online cash games.
– Key Career Dates –
- 2008: After making a big cash at EPT Prague, he decides not to go back to college but to become a professional poker player.
- 2010: He wins the WSOP Main Event for $8.944 million. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of his career to date.
- 2015: He wins his second WSOP gold bracelet after finishing first in the $111,111 High Roller for One Drop for $3.990 million.
– Jonathan Duhamel’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Duhamel grew up in Quebec, Canada. He found poker, just like so many others, as a teenager during the Moneymaker boom. He started playing the game with his friends.
After high school, went on to attend the University of Quebec in Montreal where he studied business administration and finance. However, he never graduated. Despite his family’s objections, he dropped out to become a professional poker player. As it seems, it worked out quite well for him.
Despite making a name for himself in the poker world with some big tournament cashes at a young age, he said in a 2012 ESPN interview that early on in his career, he focused on cash games.
“I wanted to see how I could do on the circuit. I was a cash player and tournaments were a new challenge. That made me want to play. It was a new challenge for me” – Duhamel told ESPN.com.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Duhamel has $18.012 million in live tournament earnings, according to The Hendon Mob. That sum is the product of cashes in 107 different tournaments over the span of 15 years. Also, he’s in the top 50 on the site’s all time money list and in the top 5 of the Canadian all time money list.
The first recorded cash on his page is from August 2006. He came in 47th in the $230 No Limit Hold’em event at the Empire State Poker Series in Verona, NY for $369.
His first big break came in December 2008. He finished 10th in the €5,250 Main Event at EPT Prague for €42,800, which equaled just under $55,000 at the time. Thanks to this big live tourney score, Duhamel decided not to go back to college but to pursue playing cards for a living.
However, evidently, his real “big break” came with his 2010 WSOP Main Event victory. Since then, Duhamel racked up quite a few additional impressive live tournament results.
In January 2011, he took down the €10,300 EPT High Roller in Deauville, France for €200,000.
At the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas, he delivered three major scores within a month. First, he finished 4th in the $100,000 Super High Roller for $313,600. Then, he won the $5,000 NLHE – 8-Max event for $239,830. And finally, to top off his magnificent PCA performance, he came in 2nd in the $25K NLHE 8-Max High Roller event and won $634,550 more.
→ World Series of Poker ←
Jonathan Duhamel is a 3-time WSOP gold bracelet winner.
In 2010, he won the most prestigious poker tournament in the world, the WSOP Main Event. He was the first player from Canada to do so. He managed to best a 7,319-player field for $8.944 million, beating John Racener from Florida heads-up for the title in the end.
His second bracelet came at the 2015 World Series in Vegas, when he finished first in the star-studded field of the $111,111 High Roller for One Drop event. He pocketed no less than $3.990 million for his victory. At the 2015 WSOP Europe in Berlin, he collected his third bracelet after finishing first in the €25,600 NLHE High Roller event for €554,395.
Apart from his bracelet wins, in 2013, he made it to the final table in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, the biggest mixed game event every year. He eventually busted in 8th place for $207,630.
Overall, Duhamel has cashed in 44 World Series events for a total of $14.644 million combined.
→ Live Cash Games ←
As we wrote above, according to Duhamel himself, he started his poker career by focusing on cash games.
Despite that, he hasn’t appeared on any TV show or online stream where he would play live cash publicly. He did appear on Live at the Bike in March 2018. However, while they usually stream cash games, Duhamel played a $10,000 Sit&Go for the stream instead. That S&G featured a total of 5 former WSOP Main Event champions: Duhamel, Johnny Chan, Ryan Reiss, Joe McKeehan, and Scot Blumstein. It was won by McKeehan.
Next week is Main Event Champions Week on @LIVEattheBike!
March 1: sit n go
March 2: 25/50 cash gameConfirmed players include Johnny Chan, @JonathanDuhamel, @RyanRiess1, @dude904 & @SBlum2711, with more to come. pic.twitter.com/xMRckE39S2
— Live at the Bike! Poker Stream (@LIVEattheBike) February 20, 2018
→ Online Poker ←
Duhamel plays under the screen name “johnduhamel” on PokerStars. Unfortunately, his results are not tracked by any online database – not cash games, nor MTT’s.
The only recorded online tournament score of his is on his WSOP profile. In May 2016, he finished 4th in the C$530 No Limit Hold’em online event for C$8,178 at the WSOP International Circuit Montreal.
→ Scandals ←
His WSOP Main Event bracelet being stolen
In December 2011, two men broke into Duhamel’s Montreal home while he was at home. The robbers tied him up, repeatedly punched him in the face, and threatened they were going to kill him if he didn’t hand over all his valuables.
The helpless Duhamel complied and let them take around $150,000 in cash – however, what hurt more was that they also took his WSOP Main Event bracelet and the custom Rolex watch PokerStars gifted him for his victory.
Thankfully, Anthony Bourque and John Stephen Clark Lemay, the two men who carried out the actual robbery, and Andres Valderrama, the getaway driver were arrested shortly after. Police also recovered about half the stolen cash.
His Main Event bracelet was found a few months later, in February 2012, by a street cleaner named Denis Theriault in Montreal.
Accusations against him on Twitter and on Two Plus Two
Over the years, multiple women in the poker community came forward and claimed they had been sexually assaulted by Jonathan Duhamel. The latest accusation came on Twitter in May 2020, from a user named “@Rightrhyme1”. Some created threads about him on the Two Plus Two Forum as well.
However, it’s important to note that Duhamel has never even been charged with a sexual crime, let alone convicted – although a police report was filed against him in 2015. Until a verdict is issued by a court, these claims are just allegations.
→ Sponsorships ←
Between January 2011 and April 2015, Duhamel was a member of Team PokerStars Pro, a roster of famous professional poker players signed to promote the biggest online poker room.
