We have come a long way from January in the different Player of the Year races. Everyone started 2025 with visions of it being “their” year. Many of those dreams have gone up in smoke, but some will have a pathway to either the CardPlayer Magazine, Global Poker Index, or PokerGO Tour Player of the Year. Whichever poll it is, the truth is that the PGT will determine who will be the victor of the Player of the Year races.
Sheer Number of Qualifying Tournaments for PGT
The World Poker Tour will be having a few events on its schedule, with one stop in Florida for the Rock & Roll Poker Open at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, FL, and the WPT World Championship at the end of December. Likewise, the European Poker Tour will make its yearly sojourn to the Czech Republic for its EPT Prague. The PGT, however, has a litany of tournaments that could swing the pendulum in all these POY battles.
That tournament action is already underway. The PGT is in Houston, TX, for the PGT Texas PLO Roundup, a $3,000 Main Event that is amid its six Day Ones. The PGT will also host three PLO “High Roller” tournaments, each with a $5,000 buy-in. But that is only a precursor to action in December on the PGT.
A new event will step to the fore at the PokerGO Studios in Las Vegas after the calendar flips to December. The PGT “Rags to Riches” schedule features a $3,000 Main Event with two Day Ones, culminating in a final table on December 5. The PGT will draw on the efforts of the World Series of Poker Paradise from December 6-15, with five tournaments on that schedule which will count toward the PGT Player of the Year standings. The 2025 schedule wraps on December 20 on the PGT, when the tenth running of the $100,000 Super High Roller Bowl takes place.
Alex Foxen Leads Race for PGT Championship
It is a tight race in the battle for the Player of the Year title and the top seed in the 2025 PokerGO Tour Championship. The PGT Championship will feature a freeroll tournament on January 12, with the victor earning a $500,000 first-place prize. The top forty (40) players from the 2025 PGT Leaderboard will be the only players taking part in this event, and this is important because the starting stacks are determined by where the players finished the prior year.
Right now, the leader of the pack is Alex Foxen, although he is facing several challenges in a bunched leaderboard. Foxen’s 2,816 points are only 244 points ahead of Sam Soverel, who has been making a massive charge of late. David ‘Chino’ Rheem, World Champion Michael Mizrachi, and Nick Schulman are all in the Top Five and should be pretty assured of a seat at the table come January 12.
Where it gets interesting is in the cutoff line for the $1,000,000 Freeroll. Currently, the bottom three players who would earn entry into the Freeroll are Jarod Minghini (38th), Richard Gryko (39th), and Ben Tollerene (40th). Players like Shaun Deeb, Jim Collopy, and Michael Duek are currently on the outside looking in as they sit in 41st through 43rd places, respectively, but they want to at the minimum keep their positions there; should a player in the Top 40 decline to participate in the Freeroll, then the next player in the rankings would move up and be eligible to participate.
This is not even considering the two Player of the Year races with CardPlayer and the GPI. Currently, Jesse Lonis is atop both leaderboards, but he is facing some heat from Foxen (CardPlayer) and Artur Martirosyan (GPI) if he is going to hold those by the end of 2025. The next month will be the determining factor in all the battles, and the PokerGO Tour will be at the forefront of the action.
The post PokerGO Tour Will Decide 2025 Player of the Year Races in December appeared first on Poker News Daily.
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