2025 has been a bumper year for live poker, with records broken at the World Series of Poker, Triton Poker, the Asian Poker Tour, WSOP Paradise, and major tournament stops around the globe.
Who took advantage of the booming prize pools? Who ran hot when it mattered the most? And who were poker’s biggest consistent winners of 2025?
Top 10 tournament money winners in 2025
1st: Jesse Lonis (US) – $13,334,563
A fantastic year for Lonis saw him move up to 44th on the all-time money list, but it’s not easy at the top. Lonis made a huge fold with a set of kings in the recent WSOP Paradise Super Main Event. He was wrong, and he came in for some heavy criticism on X.
A call would have seen him with a huge stack of over 30 million and in with a real shot at a deep run at the $10 million first prize. The fold left him with 10 million and change, and he ended up cashing in 55th for $180,000.
Daniel Negreanu probably put it the best in a post on X: “He got this one wrong, but how often is he getting it right and getting away from coolers that most humans just shrug and go broke on? It’s a fine line, and if you don’t understand this, you can never unlock your full potential.”
2nd: Kayhan Mokri (Norway) – $13,255,542
Mokri was one of the first players to take on Ossi Ketola in a series of nosebleed heads-up matches earlier in 2025. He’d won around $500K in tournaments in 2025 at this point in August.
After the Ketola matches, Mokri went on a tear in the tournament world, taking down the $50K EPT Super High Roller Second Chance event in Barcelona before winning a $150K Triton in Jeju for $3,835,059.
He saved the best until last, though, with a monster $7,725,000 score in the $250K Triton Invitational at WSOP Paradise that also saw him win his first bracelet. Mokri is 63rd on the all-time money list but is moving upwards rapidly.
3rd: Stephen Chidwick (UK) – $12,627,025
What can we say about Stephen Chidwick that we haven’t already said multiple times? He’s consistently the biggest winner in high-stakes tournaments around the world and is on a charge to the number one spot on the all-time money list.
It’s surely only a matter of time before he takes the crown off Bryn Kenney because of the volume he puts in and the frightening number of times he makes the big payouts.
Chidwick won a $200K shortdeck event at Triton Jeju in September for $3,455,000 before placing second in a $125K NLHE event for $1,927,188 the next week. He won the Super High Roller at the 2025 NAPT Las Vegas for $557,930 and then cashed five times at WSOP Paradise, four of them for six figures. The biggest was for $526,500 in the $75K Triton PLO event. He’s a monster.
4th: Seth Davies (US) – $12,363,447
When we did the mid-year round-up, Seth Davies was number one after an incredible summer at the WSOP.
By the start of August, he’d won $12,291,647 in the first half of 2025 alone – and he didn’t really get started until May, when he finished third in the €100K Super High Roller at EPT Monte Carlo for $1,054,746.
A couple of weeks later he won a $50K Triton in Montenegro for $1,490,741 and came second in the biggest $200K Invitational in Triton’s history for $4,190,000. He then won his career-best score of $4,752,551 in the $250K WSOP Super High Roller. Talking to PokerOrg immediately afterward, he said, “I’m absolutely blown away and so fortunate I can’t even begin to describe it.”
But variance hits everyone eventually, and Davies had a brutal end to the year at WSOP Paradise.
5th: Ben Tollerene (US) – $12,010,551
Tollerene is another player who did his greatest work of 2025 in the first half of the year. He had his hottest run at Triton Montenegro, where, in the space of a week, he finished second in the $150K for $3,437,344 and won the PLO Main Event for $2,390,000.
He followed that up with two big six-figure scores at the WSOP and six more across Triton Jeju, the PokerGO Tour, and the WPT World Championship.
6th: Aleks Ponakovs (Latvia) – $11,868,760
Ponakovs enjoyed three monster scores in 2025 and saved the best until last. He won $3,139,000 for a runner-up finish in a $150K at Triton Jeju in March, before notching another seven-figure score of $1,409,000 at Triton Jeju in September.
After his biggest win, at WSOP Paradise, Ponakovs said he wasn’t even planning on playing the $150K Triton Main Event. He’ll be glad he did, winning it and his third WSOP bracelet, along with his career-best cash of $4,750,000.
7th: Michael Mizrachi (US) – $11,467,933
Mizrachi was snap-inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame after winning the $50K Poker Players Championship (for the fourth time!) and the $10K Main Event at the 2025 WSOP for a combined $11,331,322.
Before the WSOP, Mizrachi had just one cash – $5K for winning the $300 buy-in All-In for Saint Jude Charity tournament in January. His biggest since was for $60K in the WSOP Super Main Event in December.
Listen to him talk to PokerOrg after his incredible 2025 Main Event win below.
8th: Alex Foxen (US) – $11,266,396
Foxen sits just outside the top 10 all-time money list, but he’s consistently one of the very best tournament players in the world. He puts in huge volume – he cashed 56 times in 2025, and 14 of these came at the 2025 WSOP. His biggest win came at the WSOP when he finished second to Seth Davies in the $250K Super High Roller for $3,060,314.
9th: Jason Koon (US) – $11,126,678
Jason Koon clinched a top-10 spot in the 2025 money list with a late surge, finishing runner-up in the year-ending Super High Roller Bowl in Las Vegas for $650,000. He also showed no signs of slowing down, cashing twice at WSOP Paradise and adding another score at the WPT World Championship in December.
Koon’s two biggest cashes of the year came during the summer, headlined by a $3,393,656 win in a $150K Triton event in Montenegro. That marked his 12th Triton title — more than double Bryn Kenney’s total of five, which ranks second all-time. He also added a second WSOP bracelet by taking down the $50K High Roller for $1,968,927.
10th: Artur Martirosyan (Russia) – $11,034,164
Another elite player who puts in an incredible amount of volume, Martirosyan’s best score of 2025 came at Triton Jeju in March when he finished 3rd in the $100K Main Event for $2,644,000. He enjoyed another two seven-figure scores and numerous six-figure cashes, including two at WSOP Paradise.
What effect has this had on the all-time money list?
The number 1 on the all-time money list is Bryn Kenney, and he was only 29th on 2025’s money list. He’s still got the number one spot, but the lead between him and Chidwick has contracted. If current trends continue, 2026 should be the year Chidwick finally overtakes him.
Poker’s all-time money list
- Bryn Kenney (USA): $80,035,495
- Stephen Chidwick (UK): $76,001,259
- Jason Koon (USA): $70,242,656
- Mikita Badziakouski (Belarus): $66,405,194
- Justin Bonomo (USA): $65,611,097
- Isaac Haxton (USA): $61,565,098
- Dan Smith (USA): $60,505,639
- Daniel Negreanu (CAN): $57,608,697
- Adrian Mateos (Spain): $54,768,380
- Phil Ivey (USA): $54,493,083
2025 Female Money List
It’s no surprise to see Kristen Foxen at the top here. What’s surprising is that her $1,104,000 score in September was the first seven-figure cash of her remarkable career. Foxen took the top spot on the female all-time money list in 2025, too, dropping Vanessa Selbst into second.
Natasha Mercier came crashing into second with a $1,800,000 score for a sixth-place finish at the 2025 WSOP Super Main Event. That came on the heels of Leo Margets coming through an enormous field of 9,735 players to become the first woman to make the WSOP Main Event final table since Barbara Enright in 1995. Her payout of $1.5M for 7th place was the largest score for a woman in the 50+ year history of the event.
- Kristen Foxen (CAN) – $4,653,003
- Natasha Mercier (Lebanon) – $1,884,346
- Leo Margets (Spain) – $1,645,058
- Cherish Andrews (US) – $1,519,147
- Sosia Jiang (NZ) – $1,427,500
- Meng Ling Lin (Taiwan) – $1,216,170
- Xuan Liu (CAN) – $970,694
- Monika Hrabec (Poland) – $946,753
- Ebony Kenney (US) – $922,423
- Esther Taylor (US) – $880,434
All data courtesy of The Hendon Mob. Feature image courtesy of Triton Poker. Additional images courtesy of WSOP and Triton Poker.
