The 2025 World Poker Tour World Championship At Wynn Las Vegas is entering its final days, and the stakes have been raised down the stretch. While the two largest guaranteed tournaments of the festival are nearing their ends, the first of two high rollers wrapped up on Thursday, Dec. 19.
Four-time WPT main event champion Darren Elias, who is tied with Brian Altman as the tour’s all-time title leader, emerged victorious from a field of 89 entries that turned out for the $25,800 no-limit hold’em affair. He earned the largest share of the $2,225,000 prize pool, walking away with $631,800 as the champion.
Elias now boasts more than $15.7 million in career tournament earnings after this latest triumph. 2025 has been quite the year for him, as he also finally broke through to claim his first World Series of Poker bracelet this summer with a victory in a $888 buy-in online event during the summer.
In addition to the hardware and the money, Elias also earned 672 Card Player Player of the Year points for the win. This was his third POY-qualified title and seventh final-table finish of the year. He now sits inside the top 100 in the overall standings presented by CoinPoker.
Four of Elias’ five most recent live cashes have seen him close out the win. He took down a small deuce-to-seven no-limit event at the Borgata Fall Poker Open in November, which was not large enough to qualify for POY points. He also won a pair of $10,000 no-limit hold’em events, one at the Poker Masters and the other at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open.
Punsri, Tollerene, And Koon Continue Stellar 2025 Showings
Elias was far from the only player to make moves in the POY race thanks to this event. Thailand’s all-time money leader, Punnat Punsri, earned $277,125 and 448 as the third-place finisher. With four titles and 27 final tables under his belt in 2025, Punsri grew his point total to 10,540, which is good for second place heading into the final days of the competition.
Punsri now trails current leader Jesse Lonis by just 147 points. He has cashed for more than $11 million in POY earnings this year, with his largest payday being the $2.6 million he earned as the champion of a $125,000 buy-in at the Triton Jeju festival in the spring. Punsri now has five multi-million-dollar scores across his career. His lifetime earnings now sit at just shy of $32 million.
Other big names that ran deep in this event include Brock Wilson (9th), all-time Triton titles leader Jason Koon (8th), and current tenth-ranked POY contender Ben Tollerene (6th). This was Tollerene’s 17th final-table showing of 2025. Koon climbed to just outside the top 25, with three titles and 14 final tables on the year.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Payout | POY Points |
| 1 | Darren Elias | $631,800 | 672 |
| 2 | Neil Warren | $398,275 | 560 |
| 3 | Punnat Punsri | $277,125 | 448 |
| 4 | Connor Rash | $203,000 | 336 |
| 5 | David Chen | $153,000 | 280 |
| 6 | Benjamin Tollerene | $116,800 | 224 |
| 7 | Dinesh Alt | $92,800 | 168 |
| 8 | Jason Koon | $75,650 | 112 |
| 9 | Brock Wilson | $63,400 | 56 |
Photo credit: World Poker Tour.
