As the international poker scene gears up for 2026, we’re taking a look back at the top performers from the 2025 Card Player Player of the Year race presented by CoinPoker. The 10th through 6th place finishers were covered in a previous article, with the final POY award winner to be revealed soon.
This story focuses on the 5th through 2nd-ranked players in the final standings. Together, these four elite contenders accumulated over $36.6 million in POY earnings across 78 final tables, collectively winning 14 titles along the way. Without further ado, here is our in-depth look at the best of the best from 2025.
5. Artur Martirosian
Total Points: 8,514
POY Earnings: $10,639,056
Titles: 3
Final Tables: 18
Artur Martirosian surged into the top five thanks, in part, to a key victory in a multi-flight event with multiple thousands of entries. That win, in addition to his consistent success on the high-stakes scene, helped propel him into the upper echelons of the POY standings. The 28-year-old from Voronezh, Russia, navigated his way through a field of 2,091 entries in a $3,500 buy-in at the Wynn Summer Classic, earning $1,016,763 as the champion. This was by far the largest field he’d ever topped across his 20 recorded wins, easily topping the 852-entry turnout for the 2021 European Poker Tour Sochi main event.
Martirosian’s other two titles in 2025 were more in line with the rest of his successes of late. In June, he came out on top of a field of 64 entries in the $25,000 heads-up championship at the World Series of Poker for $500,000 and his third career gold bracelet. His final victory came at the Triton Jeju stop in the fall. He bested 60 entries in the $25,000 pot-limit Omaha six-max event for his third trident trophy and $421,000.
His largest payday of the year came at the same venue back in the spring. He placed third in the $100,000 buy-in event for $2.6 million, the second-largest windfall of his career. He also placed third in a $100,000 pot-limit Omaha event at the Triton Montenegro stop, adding nearly $1.1 million with that podium showing.
There were 10 players last year who accumulated eight figures in POY-qualified earnings, including Martirosian with $10.6 million. With nearly $34.6 million in lifetime scores, Martirosian is the clear leader atop the Russian all-time money list. In fact, his haul in 2025 alone would be good for third on that leaderboard. Only Igor Kurganov ($18.8 million) would sit above him.
4. Quan Zhou
Total Points: 8,704
POY Earnings: $3,501,337
Titles: 2
Final Tables: 14
China’s Quan Zhou kicked his run to the top four into high gear with a runner-up showing in a massive $25,000 event at Triton Jeju. He placed second from a field of 391 entries for a career-best $1.2 million payday. Before that massive score, he had just two final-table finishes on the year.
Zhou added another two final tables in May, then kicked off his WSOP run with a fourth-place finish in a $2,000 no-limit hold’em event for $153,576. He then finished seventh in the $50,000 pot-limit Omaha high roller for $294,013 and third in the $10,000 PLO championship for another $650,567.
The first outright victory of the year for Zhou came in a $3,000 PLO mystery bounty event a few days later at the Wynn Summer Classic. He earned $307,025 as the winner with over $130,000 in bounty payouts as well.
After a few months without any relevant results, Zhou ripped off four final tables in as many weeks to close out the year. Among those deep runs was his second title, which saw him overcome 421 entries in the $5,000 mystery bounty event at the WSOP International Super Circuit Cyprus for another $319,000, with $94,000 coming from seven bounty pulls.
Zhou, who also finished inside the top ten in the 2023 POY standings, grew his lifetime earnings to nearly $13.9 million after another successful year on the circuit.
3. Alex Foxen
Total Points: 9,371
POY Earnings: $11,306,229
Titles: 5
Final Tables: 19
Alex Foxen has finished inside the top 20 in the year-end POY standings for nine straight years, with a third-place showing in 2025 counting as his fifth top-five performance in that span. He also placed second in 2019, third in 2018, and fourth in both 2021 and 2022. In fact, he’s placed worse than ninth only once in that stretch, with his 19th-place landing spot in 2017.
While many players padded their stats in the final stretch, with December in particular hosting a buffet of high-impact tournaments, Foxen managed his podium finish despite not making a final table in the final two months of the year. He also didn’t begin his spree until March. That being said, he did manage an incredible 19 final-table appearances and five titles in between those two dry spells.
The 34-year-old poker pro kicked off his run with two final-table runs at Triton Jeju in March for nearly $1.3 million in combined earnings. He then ripped off seven final tables in roughly six weeks, accumulating three titles and more than $1.8 million in prize money along the way. The wins came in a $15,000 PGT PLO Series event, a $15,000 no-limit hold’em affair at the U.S. Poker Open, and a $25,000 buy-in at Triton Montenegro. That last triumph saw Foxen earn $755,000 and his third career trident trophy.
Foxen managed one more podium showing in Montenegro, ten days after his win, before heading back to Las Vegas for the WSOP. He added another three final tables at the series, cashing for nearly $3.8 million in those events alone. The highlight saw him finish second in the $250,000 high roller that he won back in 2022 for a career-best score of $4.6 million. He secured nearly $3.1 million for his runner-up showing this time around.
Another half-dozen final tables were added to Foxen’s tally in the fall, including his fourth and fifth titles of the year. Both came in PGT events, bringing his total wins on that high-stakes-centric tour to four on the year. He won a $10,000 event at the Poker Masters in September, then took down an early $5,000 progressive knockout at the PGT PLO Series II for his last POY-qualified score of the year on Oct. 16.
The $11.3 million in POY earnings that Foxen compiled this year grew his overall total to more than $56.1 million.
2. Punnat Punsri
Total Points: 10,540
POY Earnings: $11,041,805
Titles: 4
Final Tables: 27
Thai all-time money leader Punnat Punsri is so far ahead of the pack that his POY earnings from 2025 alone would be almost enough to double second-ranked Kannapong Thanarattrakul ($5.9 million). Punsri now has nearly $32 million after cashing for over $11 million this year.
Punsri managed to improve on his fourth-place finish in the 2024 POY race with another incredibly consistent year on the circuit. His 27 final-table finishes were tied with the ultimate winner of the POY award for the most of any player. Punsri wound up falling just 268 points short of a win in the race, which means that just a 2.5 percent increase to his total would’ve been enough to come out on top.
It’s been a meteoric rise to the top for Punsri, who had just $131,000 in career cashes heading into 2021. He’s cashed for tens of millions in the half decade since, recording 10 seven-figure scores with five of those being for multiple millions. He only managed one such windfall in 2025, taking down the $125,000 Triton Jeju event in the spring for $2.6 million.
Punsri is now one of seven players with five trident trophies, having earned three of them this year alone. He backed up his big win in Jeju with a victory in a $25,000 pot-limit Omaha six-max event in Montenegro for $550,000. Then in September, he emerged victorious in a $50,000 seven-max event at the fall Jeju series for another $1.7 million. He also came close to taking down the first-ever Triton One main event, finishing second from a field of 1,046 in the $8,000 buy-in affair. He earned $1.2 million and 1,600 POY points as the runner-up, the largest points haul of his 2025 campaign.
The lone POY-qualified title that Punsri captured away from the Triton tables came at EPT Barcelona in August. He took down a €10,200 mystery bounty event there to add another $210,276.
After very nearly winning this year’s POY race, the 33-year-old poker player appears poised to be a threat at the highest levels of the game for years to come.
Photo credits: Artur Martirosian – PGT / Miguel Cortes, Quan Zhou – Merit Poker, Alex Foxen – PGT / Antonio Abrego, Punnat Punsri – Triton Poker.
