New year, new race.
The points have officially been tallied for the final 2025 Card Player Player of the Year standings presented by CoinPoker, and it was another massive year on the live circuit. The top 10 finishers alone collectively accumulated more than $84 million in POY earnings.
As the 2026 campaign gets underway, we pause to take a closer look back at the most impressive performers from the last dozen months on the tournament scene. While Jesse Lonis came away with the honor, the accomplishments of the rest of the top 10 were significant and deserve their own time in the spotlight.
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Punnat Punsri
Total Points: 10,540
POY Earnings: $11,041,805
Titles: 4
Final Tables: 27
Thailand’s 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’s $5.9 million career mark. Punsri now has nearly $32 million overall after cashing for over $11 million in 2025.
Punsri managed to improve on his fourth-place finish in the 2024 POY race with another incredibly consistent campaign on the circuit. His 27 final-table finishes were tied with the ultimate winner of the POY award for the most of any player, and he wound up falling just 268 points short.
It’s been a meteoric rise to the top for Punsri, who had just $131,000 in career cashes heading into 2021. He’s recording 10 seven-figure scores since, with five of those being for multiple millions. In 2025, he took down the $125,000 Triton Jeju event for $2.6 million. Punsri is now one of seven players with five trident trophies, having earned three in 2025 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 no-limit hold’em event 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 for $1.2 million and 1,600 POY points, the largest points haul of his 2025 campaign.
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.
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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 marking 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. He has arguably been the most consistent live tournament player over the last decade.
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 the dry spells.
The 34-year-old 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 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 event at the U.S. Poker Open, and a $25,000 high roller 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 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 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, which puts him in 10th place on the all-time money list.
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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 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 another $130,000 in bounty payouts as well.
After a few months without much 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 10 in the 2023 POY standings, grew his lifetime earnings to nearly $13.9 million after another huge year on the circuit.
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Artur Martirosian
Total Points: 8,514
POY Earnings: $10,639,056
Titles: 3
Final Tables: 18
In addition to his consistent success on the high-stakes scene, Artur Martirosian found a win in a multi-flight event with multiple thousands of entries to boost his POY score. 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 along with 1,620 POY points. 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 his usual diet of high roller events. In June he came out on top of a field of 64 entries in the $25,000 heads-up championship at the WSOP 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 who managed to accumulate eight figures in POY-qualified earnings, including Martirosian and his $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.
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Klemens Roiter
Total Points: 8,362
POY Earnings: $7,472,071
Titles: 2
Final Tables: 18
To say 2025 was Klemens Roiter’s best year on the live scene is an understatement. Only one of his top dozen scores was not logged over the past 12 months.
The 34-year-old won his first bracelet in 2025, overcoming a staggering field of 9,920 entries in the World Series of Poker $1,500 Monster Stack to earn $1.2 million.
While the Austrian only captured one more title after that breakthrough, it was a hefty one. He emerged victorious from a field of 57 entries in a €30,000 high roller at the European Poker Tour Barcelona festival with $594,108 and the trophy.
Roiter cashed for nearly $7.5 million in 2025, pushing his lifetime haul over $9.3 million in the process. He made 18 final tables, a total that only nine players surpassed. Two of those came in the same week at Triton Jeju for a combined $1.1 million.
His largest windfall came just a few weeks before the year ended. He placed fifth out of 237 entries in the $100,000 WSOP Paradise Triton main event, earning a new personal-best payday of $1,462,000 for his efforts.
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Brandon Wilson
Total Points: 7,868
POY Earnings: $6,402,092
Titles: 5
Final Tables: 15
Fresh faces aren’t always easy to come by at tournament poker’s highest stakes, but every so often, a player manages to make the leap. Brandon Wilson established himself as one to watch with a hot streak in high rollers at the Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood in 2023 and 2024. He won four titles there in the span of 16 months, capping off the run with a victory in a $25,000 high roller.
The 32-year-old carried the momentum into 2025 and managed to come away with his best year yet. The majority of Wilson’s $9.8 million in career earnings were tallied during the year, with $6.4 million amassed across 27 in-the-money finishes.
The Illinois native made 15 final tables, coming away with five titles. In September he finished second in a $50,000 buy-in at Triton Jeju for $1,150,000. Roughly seven weeks after that close call, he battled his way to a fourth-place payout of $1,132,000 in a $125,000 Triton event at the WSOP Paradise series.
The biggest win of Wilson’s year came in the $25,000 finale at the Poker Masters in October. He beat out 63 entries to secure $464,000 and one of two PGT victories. He then closed out his campaign in style, taking down a $25,000 high roller at the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas for $341,250 just a week before Christmas.
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Sam Soverel
Total Points: 7,267
POY Earnings: $7,072,865
Titles: 6
Final Tables: 17
Sam Soverel doubled his bracelet count in 2025, securing his third during the summer and fourth at the WSOP Paradise. Both of those wins cracked his top five career scores, with the latter being his largest payday yet on the circuit. He beat out 103 entries in the $100,000 WSOPP Triton pot-limit Omaha main event, earning $2.6 million and the hardware.
Nearly five months before that in Las Vegas, he triumphed in the $10,000 no-limit hold’em six-max championship, outlasting 546 players to walk away with $986,337. The two previous bracelets for Soverel came in a 2023 WSOP Online $5,300 high roller and the 2016 $1,000 pot-limit Omaha event.
The 35-year-old won four more POY-qualified titles this year and made another dozen final-table runs on top of his six victories. His incredible consistency helped propel him to a top-1- showing in this race while also putting him in pole position in the PokerGO Tour standings heading into the PGT Last Chance festival and the $1,000,000 PGT Championship. Check back next issue for those results.
The Florida native closed the year strong, winning three of his five titles in the final two months of 2025. He placed third in the $100,000 Super High Roller Bowl just before the year-ending holidays, adding $350,000 to bring his POY earnings to nearly $7.1 million. Also, he took down the PGT Heads Up National Championship, the results of which embargoed until the tournament aired on Peacock.
Soverel now boasts lifetime cashes of more than $32 million after this standout showing.
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Stephen Chidwick
Total Points: 7,254
POY Earnings: $12,476,018
Titles: 2
Final Tables: 19
While there were a couple fresh faces near the upper echelons of the POY race, 2025’s ninth-place finisher could not be more of a staple near the top of the standings. Stephen Chidwick, who won this award twice (2019, 2022) logged his seventh top-10 finish of the past nine years in 2025. Even his two down years in that stretch, in 2020 and 2021 were hardly disasters, as he finished 23rd and 15th, respectively. His average finish in the year-end rankings from 2017 through 2025 sits at just shy of eighth place.
The 36-year-old tournament superstar’s latest entry in a long line of incredible performances saw him bank nearly $12.5 million across 19 final tables, with two POY-qualified wins along the way. The Deal, England native captured two of his three largest scores ever in 2025, including taking down the Triton Jeju $200,000 short deck event for $3.5 million and finishing second in the $125,000 no-limit hold’em event at that same festival for another $1.9 million.
He managed another seven-figure score with a runner-up showing in the WSOP $50,000 pot-limit Omaha event for just shy of $1.4 million. His other title for the year came in a $50,000 high roller at the PokerStars North American Poker Tour Las Vegas festival. He took home $557,930 along with the spade trophy.
Chidwick’s career earnings have grown to a staggering $76.8 million. That is good for second on poker’s all-time money list, trailing only Bryn Kenney’s $81.1 million.
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Andrew Ostapchenko
Total Points: 7,248
POY Earnings: $2,816,248
Titles: 3
Final Tables: 14
The two largest scores of longtime poker pro Andrew Ostapchenko’s career were both recorded at the WSOP last summer. The 35-year-old Southern Californian fell just short of securing his first bracelet when he finished second from a field of 392 in the $25,000 eight-max no-limit hold’em event. While he didn’t hoist the gold that day, he did walk away with just shy of $1.3 million.
Five weeks later, he battled his way back to heads-up play at the series. The second time around he was able to close out the win, defeating fellow top POY contender Brandon Wilson to lock up the bracelet and the top prize of $606,849.
Ostapchenko now has more than $5.3 million in lifetime cashes, with more than half of that total earned in 2025. Prior to his breakout this summer, his top score had been the $282,360 he earned for winning the 2024 Bay 101 Rising Star event.
While his summer was the headline of his year, Ostapchenko was consistent throughout. He made 14 final tables in total, including a win in the WSOP Circuit Thunder Valley $3,250 high roller in January and another triumph in a $1,100 side event during the World Poker Tour stop at the same venue in the spring.