If next Monday’s Alabama-Ohio State winner deserves the right to be College Football’s national champion, Damian Salas is the real 2020 poker world champion, in my opinion. He earned it, he deserves the title, and he’ll make a fine ambassador for this great game.

Damian Salas and Joseph Hebert joke around after the 2020 WSOP Main Event. (Image: Twitter)

Salas defeated Joseph Hebert heads-up at the Rio in Las Vegas Sunday night to secure the bracelet. In doing so, he won an extra $1 million (had already won $1.5 million) and was crowned the 2020 world champion. He originally reached and won the GGPoker final table — played in the Czech Republic. Hebert won the WSOP.com bracket of the Main Event after shipping the final table for $1.5 million at the Rio. They both earned the right to face-off heads-up for all the marbles.

CardsChat’s Daniel Smyth wrote on Monday that he doesn’t consider Salas the “real” world champ, of which I wholeheartedly disagree. My colleague makes a valid point about the Main Event that ran this past summer on GGPoker, won by Stoyan Madanzhiev. He argues that Madanzhiev was the presumed world champ by the poker community at the time and then the WSOP reversed course and decided to host a separate Main Event later in the year.