The 2025 PokerGO Tour Player of the Year award became a three-horse race in the final days, and Alex Foxen claimed the top spot on the very last day.
With his victory in the closing event of the PGT Last Chance series, his fifth win of the 2025 PGT season, Foxen earned enough points to surpass Sam Soverel to win the award. Chino Rheem, who made a big late push with four cashes in the six-event PGT Last Chance series, finished eighth in the finale and settled for third in the PGT POY standings.
Foxen’s PGT POY campaign started in earnest in late March and early April during the PGT PLO Series. He recorded his first PGT win of 2025, two second-place finishes ,and a third-place showing during that series. Foxen followed that up with his second win of the month, in U.S. Poker Open event no. 7, worth $340,200.
His biggest single PGT point-earning result came during the 2025 World Series of Poker, with a second-place finish in the $250,000 super high roller, for $3,060,314 and 600 PGT points. Foxen added victories in the PGT Poker Masters in September and the PGT PLO Series II in October. He now has 12 career PGT titles to his name.
Foxen closed out the season during the PGT Last Chance series with two cashes. After an eighth-place finish in event no. 3, with POY honors hanging in the balance, Foxen closed strong. He needed to finish in fourth place or higher in the last tournament of the festival to pass Soverel in the season-long PGT standings. He ended up winning the tournament outright, earning $232,400 for the win.
Across 27 qualifying PGT cashes, Foxen earned a total of $6,277,148, and won five trophies. Foxen and Rheem tied for the most PGT trophies on the year with five, while Soverel won four times.
Top Ten Stand Tall
Soverel’s runner-up PGT POY finish was a case of tough luck. His four victories spanned three venues, with a pair of ARIA high roller triumphs, a WSOP bracelet in the $10,000 six-max championship, and a North American Poker Tour Las Vegas title at Resorts World. Across 31 cashes, Soverel made 13 final tables and won four of those events.
Rheem recorded the most cashes of any player on the PGT leaderboard, finishing in the money 35 times. He showed off the versatility of his game, with PGT victories in an eight-game event, two PLO tournaments, a $5,100 progressive knockout event, and a straight-up no-limit hold’em format.
For Michael Mizrachi, who finished fourth, the power of winning both the WSOP main event and Poker Players Championship spoke for itself.
The rest of the top 10 was, predictably, rounded out by true legends of the game: women’s money leader Kristen Foxen (10th), bracelet winner Andrew Lichtenberger (9th), two-time Card Player POY Stephen Chidwick (8th), 2025 Card Player POY Jesse Lonis (7th), Poker Hall of Famer Nick Schulman (6th), and three-time bracelet winner Joao Simao (5th).
2025 PGT Leaderboard Final Standings
| Place | Player | PGT Points | Wins | Cashes | PGT Winnings |
| 1 | Alex Foxen | 3,134 | 5 | 27 | $6,277,148 |
| 2 | Sam Soverel | 2,979 | 4 | 31 | $4,160,568 |
| 3 | Chino Rheem | 2,803 | 5 | 35 | $3,225,992 |
| 4 | Michael Mizrachi | 2,286 | 2 | 3 | $11,391,322 |
| 5 | Joao Simao | 2,272 | 2 | 25 | $3,906,647 |
| 6 | Nick Schulman | 2,162 | 1 | 28 | $2,563,353 |
| 7 | Jesse Lonis | 1,979 | 3 | 24 | $2,423,342 |
| 8 | Stephen Chidwick | 1,688 | 2 | 14 | $3,122,284 |
| 9 | Andrew Lichtenberger | 1,676 | 1 | 17 | $2,477,932 |
| 10 | Kristen Foxen | 1,671 | 3 | 17 | $1,689,351 |
Photo credit: PGT.
