A rotating cast of Grand Canyon University students crowded into a makeshift poker room six to seven nights a week over the past four years.
Centered around a felt-topped table with projectors flickering on the walls and laptops open for homework, the bets were just 25 and 50 cents, low stakes, yet meaningful. Those late nights that bled into mornings were where Lucas Jumalon quietly refined his skill, calling down bluffs and leaving friends stunned.
These same instincts showed up again in the biggest poker tournament of his life, just months after graduating from GCU with a business administration degree with a minor in business analytics. The performance earned Jumalon a commanding chip lead entering next month’s World Series of Poker Main Event final table.
From the residence hall tables in west Phoenix to Las Vegas, the stakes have radically changed, but his strategy remained identical. Whether pulling off a queen-high hero call – when a player holds a queen as the high card to catch an opponent's bluff – or risking 54 million chips with a starting hand of ace-10, these scenarios were nothing new to the 22-year-old from Spokane, Washington.
“I promise you, I’ve called you with queen-high at our home game,” Jumalon told Teigen Knewbow, a fellow GCU alum, while celebrating together along the rail in Las Vegas last week. Knewbow just laughed because he knew it was true.
The queen-high call that shook the WSOP table was the same kind of play that once decided $100 pots in a GCU dorm. Now it’s helping carry Jumalon on poker's biggest stage with at least $1 million guaranteed and a shot at the $10 million top prize plus the WSOP bracelet when play resumes Aug. 3-5 on ESPN. Jumalon is one of nine finalists, a group that includes two former champions. His 194 million chip count is more than double that of any other player. If Jumalon wins, he would become the second-youngest Main Event champion in the tournament's 56-year history.
“You have to be some form of next-level to be able to have reads like that. That was nuts,” said Knewbow, who also graduated from GCU in the spring with a degree in finance. “If you didn’t know he was a poker player, you probably would never be able to guess it. He’s super nice. He’s always super friendly and helps others. It couldn’t happen to a better person.”
Poker always has been a part of Jumalon’s life. His dad, Butch, is a prominent figure in the Northwest poker community, introducing his son to the game at a young age. Jumalon would sit in on games with his dad’s friends as an 8- or 9-year-old — and win.
“I remember I was down to one chip, probably half of a big blind,” he said reflecting on a childhood memory. “I spun it all the way back up and chopped the tournament heads-up. And in (the WSOP), I was down to 5,000 chips and you start with 60,000. That feeling brought me back to when I was a kid and reminded me that anything can happen. You just got to stay in it and keep working.”
By his mid-teens, Jumalon began to take poker seriously, pouring hours into study even as he prepared for college.
At GCU, he tried to balance a full academic load with a travel schedule that could pull him away for extended stretches while he competed in tournaments. Earning a degree, though, was a priority for Butch, and his son honored it.
Poker and a degree in business administration and business analytics are complementary, Jumalon believes. On the analytics side, he sees every hand as a live case study.
“We’re taking mass amounts of information and trying to configure, in the moment, what’s the best option,” he said. “I think that’s the emphasis of data analytics … trying to figure out how to make our bottom line better.”
On the business side, the classroom lessons gained unexpected urgency this summer.
“I’m essentially my own brand now,” he said. “Trying to juggle all of that and make sure I’m making the best business decision for myself is super key. Some of the business law stuff, contracts, obligations. You don’t think you’re going to use all of it, but you get a lot more than you realize.”
GCU also provided a community that has stood by him long before he was in line to win millions of dollars.
Fellow Lopes Knewbow, Zack Osborne and Gunnar Reed piled into a car and drove through the desert to support their friend in the early rounds of last week’s WSOP. The trio said the scenes felt like déjà vu from their residence hall rooms, only with TV cameras and much bigger pot on the line.
Like Jumalon, Osborne found a lifeline and community in the poker games after transferring to GCU.
“I found the poker game and met my closest friends,” said Osborne, who will earn a degree in criminal justice from GCU this summer. “The fact that Lucas has made this deep of a run and has a very good chance of winning it is one of the coolest things ever. He’s worked really hard, and he deserves every single second of it.”
The caravan of GCU supporters heading to Las Vegas is growing. Jumalon expects more than a dozen former home-game regulars alongside family, poker friends and Pacific Northwest supporters on the rail for the final event. Excitement is also building on the GCU campus and throughout the Phoenix valley.
“A year ago, we were playing 25 cent, 50 cent in the dorms. Look at you now,” Knewbow reminds Jumalon.
Just months before he outlasted more than 9,000 players to reach the WSOP final, Jumalon was wondering if he should walk away from the game altogether. Fresh off back-to-back failed tournaments and navigating personal struggles, he told God, “If You got me, You got me, and if we need to pivot, we can pivot.”
“I didn’t know if this was what I wanted to do. I didn’t know if I was good enough to do it,” he said. “I kind of relinquished control and put it up to the man upstairs.”
Slowly, the pieces shifted. Then came the Main Event.
Jumalon says his years at GCU — surrounded by people of faith — changed him and helped him with the support to navigate the difficult stretch.
“Being around people who show their faith every day consistently is something you can’t teach,” he said. “After this, it’s kind of hard to say I could have done all of this by myself. All glory to God is all I have to say.”
As the final table approaches, the headlines naturally focus on the money. At 22 years old, Jumalon is now guaranteed to be a seven-figure winner.
He’s trying not to think that way.
“I’m a huge Kobe (Bryant) guy,” he said. “Kobe’s got the saying, ‘Job’s not finished. What’s there to be happy about?’ I’ve kind of adopted that mindset until this thing’s all over. I wasn’t entering the tournament to get ninth place. Ten million dollars could set me up for the rest of my life.
"All the personal stuff figured itself out. The poker figured itself out. It’s not lost on me that I couldn’t have done it by myself. These wins have jogged my memory of all those nights playing at GCU. I was just truly thankful and blessed."
GCU News senior writer Jason Gonzalez can be reached at [email protected].
