The 2025 World Series of Poker is in the books, and the results from the 100-tournament schedule are now being seen on the different Player of the Year races. One thing is constant, however – that Jesse Lonis is having one of the finest seasons in his poker career. Lonis is not only atop the two major POY races, but he also has a rather healthy lead for the stretch run to come.
Lonis Seizes Control of the CardPlayer POY
Before the start of the 2025 WSOP, Lonis was in the lead of the CardPlayer Magazine Player of the Year race, but it was a tenuous lead. Lonis would use three championships to add a massive number of points to his resume, with the largest being a victory at the 2025 Triton Poker Super High Roller Series $100,000 No Limit Hold’em event. In that tournament alone, Lonis would scoop nearly $3.5 million in prize money and 1680 points towards the CardPlayer POY.
With an extra three million in the bank, Lonis could pick and choose what events he wanted to play in Las Vegas over the summer. Instead of hitting the WSOP, however, Lonis decided to take on a couple of other tournament schedules in Sin City. He would win the $25,000 No Limit Hold’em Eight Max tournament at the 2025 Wynn Summer Classic, then ten days later tack on a victory in the ARIA High Roller Series $15,000 No Limit Hold’em event (and adding $688,642 to the bankroll).
These tournaments allowed Lonis to expand what was a slim lead in the CardPlayer POY into a more comfortable one. From May 17 through this week, Lonis accumulated 3120 points to his total, outpacing runner-up Alex Foxen, who “only” picked up 2058 points over the same period. In the rundown of the Top Ten on the CardPlayer Magazine Player of the Year race, you will notice that it is about the same as the lead that Lonis has established over Foxen heading to the second half of the tournament poker season:
1. Jesse Lonis (Little Falls, NY), 7679 points
2. Alex Foxen (Cold Spring Harbor, NY), 6448
3. Andrew Ostapchenko (Carlsbad, CA), 6206
4. Artur Martirosian (Voronezh, Russia), 6051
5. Quan Zhou (Harbin, China), 5839
6. Ben Tollerene (Lubbock, TX), 5687
7. Brandon Wilson (Chicago, IL), 5168
8. Nguyen Le (Cambridge, MA), 4919
9. Nick Schulman (Manhattan, NY), 4832
10. Jose ‘Nacho’ Barbero (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 4782
“First Female” of Poker Appears in GPI POY
The story may be the same in the Global Poker Index Player of the Year race, but fresh faces make their way into the rankings behind Lonis.
One of those names is Shannon Shorr, who used three big finishes at the WSOP and the Aria Poker Classic to enter the GPI POY in seventh position. Making a huge leap into the Top Ten was Spain’s Lautaro Cabrerizo, though, as he used his deep run in the 2025 WSOP Main Event (fifteenth place) to rack up 440 points. Finally, the current “First Female” of poker, Kristen Foxen, used an array of finishes at the WSOP, the Wynn Summer Classic, and the Venetian DeepStack Championships to squeak past Jeremy Ausmus for the tenth-place slot on the list.
It is Lonis in the pole position at this mark in the tournament poker season, however. He has staked himself to a 340-point lead over Martirosian, who is closely pursued by Foxen for the second/third positions. In the GPI ratings, the points are the key thing as only a player’s thirteen best finishes are tallied to give them their yearly totals; the top three players have maxed out their thirteen finishes, meaning that they will now have to try to find a way to beat what they did earlier in 2025.
Here is a look at the Global Poker Index’s Player of the Year race heading into the second half of the tournament poker season:
1. Jesse Lonis (Little Falls, NY), 4210.33 points
2. Artur Martirosian (Voronezh, Russia), 3871.71
3. Alex Foxen (Cold Spring Harbor, NY), 3839.96
4. Quan Zhou (Harbin, China), 3643.5
5. Ben Tollerene (Lubbock, TX), 3508.85
6. Jose ‘Nacho’ Barbero (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 3494.85
7. Shannon Shorr (Birmingham, AL), 3491.25
8. Lautaro Cabrerizo (Spain), 3430.36
9. Nick Schulman (Manhattan, NY), 3425.82
10. Kristen Foxen (Canada), 3389.28
Players may think that the hard work is over with the close of the WSOP, but for those who are vying for a POY award, it is just beginning.
Although it might have an overinfluence on the POY races, the PokerGO Tour will kick back into action in September with a new creation, the PGT Bounty Series, that promises to draw in the big guns. The World Poker Tour is filling out its schedule beginning August 1 in Bangkok, Thailand, while the European Poker Tour picks back up in Barcelona, Spain, in mid-August. Add in the multitude of non-tour-related poker events around the globe, and the fight is really just beginning as the second half of the tournament poker season kicks off.
The post Jesse Lonis Takes Dominant Lead in POY Races After WSOP appeared first on Poker News Daily.
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