Nick Schulman turns 42 tomorrow, September 18, and he is celebrating a day early. On September 16 at Les A Casino in Jeju, South Korea, he won the $100,000 NLH Main Event at the Triton Super High Roller Series Jeju II for $3,854,888, the single largest cash of his 21-year career. He defeated Bernhard Binder heads-up, claimed his second career Triton title, and did it the night before his birthday.
Both Triton trophies were won in the same room, eight years apart. The numbers that define his career at this point are worth sitting with for a moment: more than $31.7 million in recorded live tournament earnings, seven WSOP bracelets, two WPT titles, two Triton titles, a Poker Hall of Fame induction in 2025, and a 2026 season that has already produced three titles and 13 final tables. Tomorrow belongs to Nick Schulman. He has earned it.
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Pool Halls, Borrowed Accounts, and a Kid Who Already Knew
Nick Schulman grew up in Manhattan and found his competitive edge early, spending his teenage years at Amsterdam Billiards on the Upper West Side. He was mentored by some of the best players in the New York area from ages 13 to 19, showed enough promise to compete in U.S. Open pool events, and worked as a bike messenger for Broadway.com between sessions. The pool halls gave him the patience, the read on people, and the willingness to sit in uncomfortable situations until the edge showed itself. Those are poker skills. He just did not know it yet.
He discovered poker at 16 at a pool tournament in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He busted from the pool event on the first day, stuck around, sat down in a Sit & Go No-Limit Hold’em game right there in the pool hall, won it, and that was it. He started playing online on a friend’s account first, since accounts required players to be of legal age, and at 16 he did not qualify. Before TheTakeover, he used another account, where Schulman was already learning to beast and crush leaderboards before most people knew his name, alongside a lost name in online poker history, Mike “teecoy” Tikoian.
By the time he was a young adult, he had his own account as TheTakeover on UltimateBet and PokerStars. From 16 to 18, he was grinding online while still below the legal threshold to sit in a casino. By the time he could legally walk into a card room, the game was already largely figured out. He went underground first, playing in New York clubs that operated outside casino regulation, grinding cash games and building a bankroll and a reputation at the same time.
Nick Schulman wasn’t a name yet when our paths first crossed. That introduction came through Todd, known online as “Homestar,” a close friend and one of the first people encountered in online poker. This was before the industry, before Vilnius, back when the game was being played from New Jersey and New York and later London, in home games and online, the way most people in that generation found it.
Todd grew up with Nick, ran in the same New York circles, and made the connection before Schulman had won anything, before the WPT title, before the bracelets, before any of it. Todd’s read on him was simple: this kid is different. He was not wrong. By the time Schulman was playing heads-up for rolls at $100/$200 limit hold’em and higher, the poker world was starting to figure that out too. He earned the nickname TheTakeover for a reason. The handle was not a boast. It was a description.
Foxwoods, 2005: The Youngest WPT Winner in History
Nick Schulman’s first recorded live tournament result was also his first live win. In November 2005, at the age of 21, he entered the $10,200 WPT World Poker Finals at Foxwoods and won, taking $2,167,500. It was the largest first prize in a regular-season WPT event at the time and made him the youngest winner in WPT history. He had been playing poker professionally for less than two years. He followed it in April 2006 with the WPT Battle of Champions, adding a second WPT title before most players his age had collected a single significant result.
The WPT wins announced what kind of player he was going to be. Not a specialist. Not someone who found a format and rode it. Someone who could beat any field, at any buy-in, in any game, on any given week. The bracelet collection that followed made the case in detail.
Seven Bracelets, Five Disciplines
Schulman won his first WSOP bracelet in 2009, taking the $10,000 No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw for $279,751. Thirteen years of WSOP appearances followed, each one adding evidence. The second bracelet came in 2012 in the same event, the No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball, for $294,321. The third came in 2019, when he won the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better for $463,670.
In 2023, he won the $1,500 Seven Card Stud for $110,800. In 2024, he won the $25,000 NLH High Roller for $1,667,842. In 2025, he took his third deuce-to-seven title, winning the No Limit 2-7 Single Draw for $497,356.
In June 2026, he added a seventh, taking the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. for $183,366. No Limit Hold’em, PLO Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud, H.O.R.S.E., deuce-to-seven in three different variations. Seven bracelets across disciplines that most tournament players have never seriously studied, at a rate that puts him in a very short list of players who have demonstrated that kind of range at the highest buy-ins the WSOP offers.
The most recent came in June 2026, when he won the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. for his seventh piece of hardware. Three months later, he added the Triton Main Event. The 2026 calendar has been, by any measure, the best year of a career that was already exceptional.
The Commentator and the Broadcaster
Alongside the playing career, Schulman built one of the most respected broadcasting resumes in poker. He worked as a commentator for ESPN’s WSOP coverage and PokerGO across multiple seasons, and in 2018 won the Broadcaster of the Year award at the American Poker Awards. He has spoken openly in interviews about what separates good poker commentary from filler: the willingness to say what is actually happening at a table, to call a bad play a bad play, to treat the viewer as someone who came to learn something rather than hear a hand described back at them. His commentary sounds like his playing. Direct, precise, with no patience for noise. In 2026, he was announced as host of a poker talk show on SiriusXM Radio, adding another chapter to a broadcast career that has run parallel to his playing one for more than a decade.
Poker Hall of Fame: Inducted at 40
On July 11, 2025, Nick Schulman became the 62nd player inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. He was 40 years old, the minimum age for eligibility. The poker community had largely viewed the induction as overdue. Seven WSOP bracelets, two WPT titles, decades of consistency across live tournaments and high-stakes cash games, and a broadcasting career that gave him a presence across every generation of the game. He is a regular in the Legends Room at the Bellagio, a private, high-stakes mixed-game environment that functions as the most demanding cash-game test in poker. That does not show up on a Hendon Mob page. It matters anyway.
Jeju, 2018 and 2026: The Same Room, Eight Years Apart
Schulman’s first Triton title came in 2018 at the Jeju stop of Triton Season 1, where he won a Short Deck event. He has said in interviews that he came to this year’s festival partly because of the success his friend Eric Wasserson had been having at the time, and that the Main Event was not originally the plan. He played it anyway.
He entered the final table fifth in chips with 3,475,000 and 23 big blinds. Roberto Perez went ninth for $424,000. Wesley Fei went eighth for $512,000, confirmed as the largest cash of his career. Danilo Velasevic, who had led the field after Day 1, went seventh for $700,000. Isaac Haxton fell sixth for $958,000. Ryuta Nakai took his first seven-figure score in fifth for $1,263,000. Xu Yang went fourth for $1,596,000. Gytis Lazauninkas, also collecting his first million-dollar cash, went third for $1,968,000 when his pocket eights ran into Schulman’s pocket tens.
Heads-up, Schulman held 62 big blinds to Binder’s 20. They agreed to an ICM deal immediately, awarding Schulman $3,714,888 and Binder $3,080,112, with $140,000 and the title left to play. In the final hand, Schulman limped with cowboys from the button, Binder raised with king-jack, and called from the big blind. The board ran A-8-2-5-T. Binder committed on two streets and called Schulman’s river all-in.
The Kings held. His quote afterward: “I really want to go home and see my wife. The champ is coming home soon, baby, get ready.”
Two days before the Main Event, Schulman had finished second in Event #11, the $50,000 NLH 7-Handed, for $810,279. That was the sixth-largest payday of his career at the time. The Main Event win moved it to second. Combined, the two results produced nearly $4.7 million in a single festival. His career earnings now sit above $31.7 million. The 1,680 Card Player POY points from the Main Event pushed him into the outright 2026 lead with 7,556 points and a 58-point edge over Punnat Punsri.
Nick Schulman Career Highlights
| Date | Result | Event | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov. 2005 | 1st | WPT World Poker Finals $10,200 NLH, Foxwoods | $2,167,500 |
| Apr. 2006 | 1st | WPT Battle of Champions IV, Las Vegas | $25,000 |
| Jun. 2009 | 1st | WSOP $10,000 No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw (1st bracelet) | $279,751 |
| Jul. 2012 | 1st | WSOP $10,000 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball (2nd bracelet) | $294,321 |
| Jun. 2019 | 1st | WSOP $10,000 PLO Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship (3rd bracelet) | $463,670 |
| Jul. 2018 | 1st | Triton Jeju Short Deck HK$100,000 (1st Triton title) | $271,974 |
| Jun. 2023 | 1st | WSOP $1,500 Seven Card Stud (4th bracelet) | $110,800 |
| Jun. 2024 | 1st | WSOP $25,000 NLH High Roller 8-Handed (5th bracelet) | $1,667,842 |
| Jun. 2025 | 1st | WSOP $10,000 No Limit 2-7 Single Draw (6th bracelet, 3rd in 2-7) | $497,356 |
| Jul. 2025 | Inducted | Poker Hall of Fame (62nd inductee, age 40) | |
| Jun. 2026 | 1st | WSOP $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. (7th bracelet) | $183,366 |
| Sept. 14, 2026 | 2nd | Triton Jeju II $50,000 NLH 7-Handed (Event #11) | $810,279 |
| Sept. 16, 2026 | 1st | Triton Jeju II $100,000 NLH Main Event (2nd Triton title) | $3,854,888* |
*ICM deal with Bernhard Binder. $140,000 and trophy left to play.
What the Numbers Say the Day Before His 42nd Birthday
More than $31.7 million in recorded live tournament earnings. Seven WSOP bracelets across five disciplines. Two WPT titles, the first won at 21 as the youngest in tour history. Two Triton titles, both won at the same table in Jeju, eight years apart. A Poker Hall of Fame induction at the minimum eligible age. Three titles in 2026 with the season still running. The outright lead in the Card Player’s Player of the Year race. A broadcast career that earned Broadcaster of the Year before most players his age had half his results list.
None of those numbers are finished. The Hendon Mob page is still being updated.
Happy birthday tomorrow, Nick. The champ is going home.
FAQ
- Sources: Triton Poker Series, The Hendon Mob
- Photos courtesy of Triton Poker Series.
- Article originally produced at poker.pro.
