The new 12 months is upon us, which implies that the 2024 Card Player Player of the Year race has formally wrapped up. In this text we are going to take an in depth have a look at some of the high performers from the event circuit over the previous 12 months, with a deal with the gamers that completed 10-6 in the ultimate POY standings offered by Global Poker. These 5 gamers are amongst the most embellished rivals in the recreation. In 2024 they mixed for greater than $27.2 million in POY earnings, with 110 ultimate tables and 18 titles between them.
The fifth by second-ranked gamers might be coated in a forthcoming article, with the official reveal of this 12 months’s POY award winner arriving quickly after.
10. Stephen Chidwick
Total Points: 6,229
POY Earnings: $5,686,359
Titles: 5
Final Tables: 20
Two-time POY award winner Stephen Chidwick has completed inside the high 50 in 11 of the previous 12 years, and has ended as a top-ten performer in six of the final eight races. This 12 months the 35-year-old poker professional from Deal, England made 20 POY-qualified ultimate tables, successful 5 titles alongside the means.
Chief amongst these victories was his triumph in the $50,000 pot-limit Omaha occasion at the World Series of Poker Paradise competition in December. He beat out a subject of 122 entries to earn $1,357,080 and his second profession gold bracelet. This was one of two seven-figure scores he recorded in 2024. He additionally completed fifth in the $150,000 buy-in at the Triton Monte Carlo sequence for $1.3 million. He now has 13 cashes for one million {dollars} or extra on his resume.
This 12 months marked the fifth time in the previous decade that Chidwick managed at the least 20 ultimate tables. He accrued practically $5.7 million throughout his POY-qualified scores this 12 months. With greater than $63.6 million in complete recorded cashes, he’s the third highest-earning participant in poker event historical past.
9. Jeremy Ausmus
Total Points: 6,849
POY Earnings: $6,327,423
Titles: 2
Final Tables: 21
Six-time bracelet winner Jeremy Ausmus had one of his greatest years on the stay event circuit, particularly with regards to securing massive paydays. Three of the high 5 largest scores of the 45-year-old’s profession have been made in 2024, together with two of his three recorded seven-figure cashes.
Ausmus locked up the second-largest windfall of his profession this summer season by ending second in a $100,000 buy-in at the WSOP for practically $1.9 million. That fell only a bit brief of surpassing the $2.1 million he earned as the fifth-place finisher in the 2012 WSOP predominant occasion.
Ausmus made a complete of 21 ultimate tables in 2024, coming away with two titles whereas accruing greater than $6.3 million throughout these occasions. That accounts for roughly 1 / 4 of his $24 million in profession cashes.
His first title of the 12 months got here in a $25,500 pot-limit Omaha occasion at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown again in April. His second additionally got here in PLO, when he triumphed in a $15,100 buy-in at the PokerGO Tour PLO Series II in October. Ausmus is presently the PGT season-long points race leader with 25 cashes, the most of any participant on that high-stakes-centric tour.
This is the fourth straight 12 months that Ausmus has completed inside the high 25 in the POY standings. His finest end in that stretch was his fifth-place displaying in 2022.
8. Jim Collopy
Total Points: 7,463
POY Earnings: $3,735,483
Titles: 6
Final Tables: 26
Jim Collopy ended 2024 with the highest ultimate POY rating up to now of his profession, which spans again to 2007. He completed with 7,463 complete factors, which is sweet for an eighth-place displaying in the standings. The three-time bracelet winner from Washington, DC. More than half of his high 15 largest event cashes have been lodged this 12 months, together with his very greatest rating: the $973,882 he earned as the third-place finisher in the $50,000 buy-in pot-limit Omaha occasion at the WSOP.
He made 26 POY-qualified ultimate tables, the second-highest complete recorded this 12 months. The ultimate desk lead resulted in a tie between Ari Engel and Jeremy Becker, who each made 27 in 2024.
Collopy closed out the win at six of these 26 ultimate tables, together with successful back-to-back $10,500 buy-in aspect occasions at the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas throughout the ultimate weeks of the 12 months.
He additionally captured his first PGT sequence championship in the fall, securing the Poker Master’s Purple Jacket after occurring a tear with 4 consecutive final-table finishes that concluded with back-to-back runner-up showings.
7. Ren Lin
Total Points: 7,823
POY Earnings: $3,565,228
Titles: 2
Final Tables: 23
Just someday faraway from falling one spot shy of his first bracelet, Ren Lin one way or the other managed to trek all the means from the WSOP Paradise competition Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas to Las Vegas to enter the $3,000 six-max occasion at the WPT World Championship. Lin went on to win that occasion, incomes $180,000 and his second title of the 12 months.
That sequence is proof of simply how exhausting Lin has been grinding the circuit lately. He managed 23 POY-qualified ultimate tables this 12 months, accruing greater than $3.5 million alongside the means. He now has greater than $14.8 million in earnings throughout 223 recorded cashes, with 53 of these scores recorded in 2024.
Lin’s different win this 12 months noticed him take down the inaugural PGT Texas Poker Open predominant occasion, besting a subject of 735 entries in the $3,300 buy-in occasion to earn $400,000.
This was the second straight top-ten end for Lin in the POY race, having positioned fifth in 2023. The Chinese-born participant, now based mostly out of the US, is unquestionably a participant to look at in 2025.
6. Alex Foxen
Total Points: 7,909
POY Earnings: $7,949,3328
Titles: 3
Final Tables: 20
Alex Foxen closed out one other huge 12 months on the high-stakes event on a excessive notice, taking down the $100,000 buy-in WSOP Paradise Triton predominant occasion for his third profession bracelet and an enormous $3.8 million greenback payday. This win got here only a few days after Foxen positioned sixth in the $500,000 Triton Million occasion for $2,795,000.
Those have been the second and third-largest event paydays but for Foxen, whose lifetime haul on the event circuit now sits at practically $43.4 million. He is simply the 18th participant in the historical past of the recreation to surpass $40 million in profession cashes.
The 33-year-old American poker professional tallied 20 complete final-table finishes and three POY-qualified titles. He additionally received a WSOP Online occasion earlier in the 12 months for what was his second bracelet win.
Foxen has been one of the most constant gamers on the circuit lately. His newest finishes in the POY race are as follows: sixth (2024), ninth (2023), 4th (2022), 4th (2021), eighth (2020), 2nd (2019), third (2018), and Nineteenth (2017). That’s eight straight years inside the high 20, with a median end of simply higher than seventh place. That common jumps to virtually fifth when you take away his Nineteenth-place run in 2017.
Photo credit: WSOP, PGT, and Triton Poker.
