Christina Read has been confirmed to be the Women's Poker Association's Player of the Year for 2023, topping the WPA's annual leaderboard that includes results from women's poker tournaments in North America. Read, a resident of Mississippi, won the 2023 WPA POY award with a landslide by amassing 692 POY points.
Read's total was more than double that of all but two other women, Bonnie Weitzel (379) and Pamela Belote (368). 2019 WPA POY Ruth Hall (321.67) and Tammy Ehrhart (306.67) completed the top five. That Read would be named the WPA's 2023 POY was evident months before the calendar year ended, based on her outstanding performances throughout 2023.
The WPA waits several months after year's end before declaring the official winner, however, to ensure that all qualifying results from North American poker events are recorded. Any women's-only event with a buy-in of $100 and 40 or more participants is eligible for inclusion in the WPA's leaderboard race.
Multiple wins key to capturing POY honor
Read's nine points-qualifying results during 2023 tied with Weitzel for the most by any woman in 2023, but no other woman came close to matching Read in quality women's-tourney triumphs. She logged four big wins in women's events between May and August to open a wide lead in the race. In May, she took down the $50,000 Added Ladies event at the Lodge in Round Rock, Texas, a special-edition tourney that drew 326 entries and featured a $500 buy-in. Read's win was worth $28.466, not far from her career-best live cash of $34,000. Later that same month, Read won the ladies event in the JACK Poker Weekend Summer Warm-Up Series in Cleveland, Ohio.
