The 2025 Card Player Player of the Year race presented by CoinPoker officially came to an end when the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31, marking the end of another massive year on the live circuit. The top ten finishers alone collectively accumulated more than $84 million in POY earnings. As the 2026 race 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 the POY award winner will surely capture much of the attention, the accomplishments of the 10th through 2nd-place finishers in this year’s race are also worth highlighting. The rest of the top ten had 30 POY-qualified titles and over 170 final-table finishes. Among their triumphs were victories on all of the top tours, with World Series of Poker bracelets, Triton tridents, and other prestigious hardware added to the pile along the way.
In this article, we’ll go in-depth on the 2025 campaigns of the 10th through sixth-place finishers.
10. 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. He defeated fellow top POY contender Brandon Wilson (more on him later) 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 being 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 two marquee finishes at the series headline his performance, Ostapchenko was consistent throughout the year. He made 14 final tables in total, with five such runs before the WSOP began. Among those was a win in a 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.
9. Stephen Chidwick
Total Points: 7,254
POY Earnings: $12,476,018
Titles: 2
Final Tables: 19
While Ostapchenko was a fresh face near the upper echelons of the POY race, 2025’s ninth-place finisher could hardly be more of a staple near the top of the standings. Stephen Chidwick, who has already won this award twice (2019, 2022) logged his seventh top-ten finish of the past nine years in 2025. Even his two down years in that stretch, in 2020 and 2021 were hardly disasters: 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 accrue nearly $12.5 million in POY earnings 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 festival for another $1.9 million.
He managed one other seven-figure score this year: 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 as the champion in that event.
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 ($81.1 million).
8. 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 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, he triumphed in the $10,000 no-limit hold’em six-max championship, outlasting 546 players to walk away with $986,337.
The two earlier 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 poker pro based out of Las Vegas won four more POY-qualified titles this year and made another dozen final-table runs on top of his six victories. His incredible consistency this year helped propel him to a top-ten showing in this race while putting him in pole position in the PokerGO Tour standings heading into the PGT Last Chance festival, which runs Jan. 5-10, with the PGT $1,000,000 Championship kicking off shortly after that. Soverel recorded 28 PGT cashes this year, totaling more than $4 million.
Soverel closed the year strong, winning three of his five titles in the final two months of 2025. He also 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. He now boasts lifetime cashes in excess of $31.7 million after this standout showing.
7. 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 Illinois native carried the momentum into 2025 and managed to come away with his best year yet on the scene. The majority of Wilson’s $9.8 million in career earnings were tallied this year, with $6.4 million accrued across 27 in-the-money finishes.
Wilson made 15 POY-qualified final tables over the past 12 months, coming away with five titles in the process. He recorded 14 of his top 20 largest paydays this year, including his first two seven-figure scores. 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 top prize in a win for Wilson this 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 in 2025. 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.
6. 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. He won his first bracelet this year, overcoming a staggering field of 9,920 entries in the $1,500 Monster Stack to earn $1.2 million.
“It’s a big dream come true, to be honest. It’s such a massive field, hard to describe, I can’t even grasp. I think it will need some days,” Roiter said after closing out that victory.
While the Austrian only captured one more title after that breakthrough triumph, 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-table finishes, a total that only nine players surpassed. 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.
An in-depth look at the fifth through second-place finishers in the final POY standings will be posted on Jan. 6, with the 2025 Player of the Year announced the following day.
Photo credits: Andrew Ostapchenko – WSOP / Spenser Sembrat, Stephen Chidwick – Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd. / Matthew Berglund, Sam Soverel – Triton Poker, Brandon Wilson – PGT / Antonio Abrego, Klemens Roiter – PGT / Enrique Malfavon
