Who would you guess has the most recorded live tournament wins so far this year?
The answer isn’t a PokerGO regular, a high stakes crusher, or even someone you’ve necessarily heard of — unless you’re a regular reader of PokerOrg.
The player currently holding this distinction is Alfie Adam, a British-born recreational player, these days often found at final tables across Asia.
When I first spoke with Adam at the Asian Poker Tour Championship back in November 2025, he confessed how his long search for a live poker trophy had finally ended earlier that year.
After 13 years without a tournament win, he had claimed two in 2025: the first at the Asia Pacific Poker Tour in Cambodia, and a second at the Zodiac Series of Poker in Taipei. Another would follow at the APT Championship, a few days after our conversation.
In the six months since then, he has won 14 more.
As a result, Adam now sits top of the worldwide table for most tournament wins in 2026, as well as 3rd for most cashes.
Back in Taipei for the recent APT series, I caught up with Adam to ask the obvious question:
Is it really true that talking to PokerOrg dramatically improves your chances of winning poker tournaments?
A trial by fire
While science may not yet have an answer to that question, Adam feels his upswing is down to one particular development in his game: a newfound passion for mixed games.
“In November I went to Jeju for the very first Gods of Poker, straight after the APT Championship,” recalls Adam. “I went to queue up for a hold’em tournament, and there was a little Vietnamese guy standing there. He grabbed hold of me and said, ‘Don't play that, play this mixed games tournament.’ I said, ‘But I don't know how to play’. He said ‘I’ll teach you’.”
That ‘little Vietnamese guy’ was Hanh Tran, a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and mixed game master with over $700K in tournament earnings and a string of wins picked up everywhere from Austria to Korea.
Learning as he went in that first Dealers Choice tournament, Adam made it to three-handed, got lucky, and ended up heads-up for the trophy — albeit at a 7-to-1 chip disadvantage.
“He was a mixed game specialist from China,” Adam says of that opponent, “and when it was my turn to choose the game I picked Texas hold’em. It bamboozled him — no one had picked it for the entire tournament. After six hands of hold’em I was the chip leader, and that basically won me the tournament.”
It may have been his experience in hold’em that turned the tables, but the taste of success in mixed games stayed with Adam, and it’s since become his primary focus.
Of the 12 tournament wins he’s collected in 2026, none have been in hold’em.
In at the deep end
“I've just got hooked on mixed games,” says Adam. “My favorite game is Big O, 5-card PLO8, but also double board bomb pot. I love all these games, 2-7, A-5, badugi, I’m getting into stud at the moment.
“As you get more experience, you start to understand the intricacies a bit more, and that's really what I enjoy.”
Adam’s background is in game theory, a subject in which he holds a PhD, and the more he explores mixed games, the more he finds it suits his expertise.
“It really is game theory,” he explains. “It's completely scenario based, the mathematics of it is very intricate. It's perfect for me and the person I am: ultra-competitive, mathematically driven, a people person. This all fits into poker, and especially mixed game poker.”
Adam claims to have never read a poker book, preferring to learn by doing. Although that’s not to say he hasn’t sought advice from some highly qualified sources.
Hanh Tran, who first pulled him into that Dealers Choice tourney in Korea, is now a good friend and travel companion on the Asian poker circuit, while Adam also notes that multiple WSOP bracelet winner Brad Ruben is also a friend with whom he regularly discusses poker strategy.
“I think you have to really just jump in at the deep end,” says Adam of his approach to learning new games. “There are so many different variants, and one will be just slightly different from another, you just have to get involved with them and once you've learned one or two, it's quite easy to learn the rest. Of course, it's hard to get good at them.”
Getting good at them seems to be coming naturally, so far.
Can he do it on the biggest stage?
Of course, winning more tournaments than anyone else doesn’t make you the best in the world.
Those looking for ammunition to undermine Adam’s achievement will find it. Smaller-than-average fields, lower-than-average buy-ins and an Asian tournament scene far away from the traditional crucibles of high-level play can all be pointed to when attempting to explain away Adam’s rise to the top of the tourney winner’s list.
But, as the saying goes, you can only beat what’s in front of you. And while every other poker player in the world has the same opportunity to rack up more wins in smaller, cheaper tourneys, so far no one has.
Still, one can’t help but wonder how a player like Adam would fare in the tougher mixed games to be found at the WSOP in Las Vegas.
We won’t have to wonder much longer.
From Taipei, Adam is heading to Incheon in Korea for the Gods of Poker Series, but after that the WSOP awaits.
“I'm really excited about Vegas this year, that’s what I’m really focused on. This will be my first year at the WSOP playing mixed games, and I've never won a bracelet before.
“Winning a bracelet requires a whole host of factors to work in your favor, but I'm in a good place and I'm confident of doing well.”
While we won’t see him in the WSOP’s $50K Poker Players Championship — the most famous mixed game event in the world — Adam will be taking a piece of Hanh Tran’s action in that supremely tough field.
After that it will be back to Taipei, for the 2nd APT Championship in November, and then… who knows?
“My life has never been about just following rules, I just decide as I'm going along. It might be that we end up back in England for a while, but I would imagine I'll still come out to Asia two or three times a year. I enjoy it so much.”
With a track record like his, we're not surprised.
Like Alfie Adam, PokerOrg is heading to Las Vegas this summer for the World Series of Poker. Stay tuned for all the biggest stories from the WSOP, every day of the series.
Additional images courtesy of the APT.
