Punnat Punsri crowned 2025 GPI Player of the Year

(PRESS RELEASE) -- The Global Poker Index announces Thailand’s Punnat Punsri is the 2025 GPI Player of the Year. Punsri becomes the first Asian player to win the GPI PoY honors.

The race at the top once again came down to the wire as Punsri (4,458.06) and back-to-back GPI PoY runner-up, Jesse Lonis (4,450.65), trotted around the globe in late December, grinding for points. In the end, it came down to a 3rd place finish in a World Poker Tour $25k High Roller at the Wynn Las Vegas that gave the current GPI #1 a less than eight-point lead on Lonis. For Lonis, it is the second year in a row that he found himself in second place and trails Punsri as GPI #2 heading into 2026.

Punsri claimed Thailand’s National Player of the Year for the fifth year in a row. It was a massive year for Punsri, as he earned almost $11 million in live tournament earnings, crushing the Triton Poker Series and the WSOP, picking up massive results in Jeju, Montenegro, Las Vegas, Barcelona, and Taiwan. Lonis ends 2025 as the top player in North America and wins the United States National Player of the Year for the first time.

For the fifth time in the last eight years, GPI Female PoY goes to Canada’s Kristen Foxen. Foxen (3,734.64) won in a landslide, building a larger than 700-point lead on the 2024 GPI Female PoY, Cherish Andrews (USA), who finished runner-up. Foxen won her second Canadian National PoY title and took over the top spot on the Women’s All-Time Money List in 2025, dethroning Vanessa Selbst, who had held the title for more than a decade.

The 2025 Mid-Major PoY, awarded to the player who had the most success in buy-ins under $2,500, is Algeria’s Omar Lakhdari. Lakhardi (2,786.79) bested runner-up, Evan Sandberg (USA) by a little over 40 points. Lakhdari’s 2025 was propelled by nine top-three finishes in major events that included a WSOPC Main Event win in Middelkerke, two Chamda Poker Series Main Event wins, and a WPT Prime Championship Chamada title. Lakhdari wins the Alergia National PoY for the eighth time and third in a row.

GPI National Players of the Year
Ninety-three players scored at least 1,000 points to win GPI National Player of the Year titles for 2025, including three countries for the first time. Patrick Stacey became the Cayman Islands’ first National Player of the Year, along with Ali Muthana Al-Kubasi from Iraq and Ghassan Bitar from Monaco.

Among the most impressive NPoY winners was the UK’s Stephen Chidwick, on top for the 10th time and eighth in a row, and Chile’s Nick Yunis, who won for the ninth straight year. Four players won for the eighth time, including Jose Nacho Barbero (Argentina; 4th straight), Joao Vieira (Portugal; 3rd straight), Igor Yaroshevskyy (Ukraine; 3rd straight), and Yiannis Liperis (Cyprus). Other notables include seven-time Lithuanian winner Matas Cimbolas, seven-time Moldovian winner Pavel Plesuv, six-time Belarusian winner Mikita Bodyakovsky (4th straight), and Hong Kong’s Daniel Tang, who won for the sixth time and fourth in a row.

First-time NPoY winners include Agharazi Babayev (Azerbaijan), Pedro Padilha (Brazil), and Carlos Serrano (Colombia), who ended Farid Jattin’s 10 straight Colombian NPoY streak. More first-time winners include Johan Schultz-Pedersen (Denmark), Rami Awad (Egypt), Ottomar Ladva (Estonia), Christoph Vogelsang (Germany), Gergo Nagy (Hungary), Toby Joyce (Ireland), Barak Wisbrod (Israel), Patrick Samir Boutros Kallas (Jordan), Iat Man Leong (Macau), Matthew Micallef (Malta), Gilbert Tin Fook (Mauritius), Tomas Szwarcberg (Mexico), JP Rounce-Sue (New Zealand), Tom-Aksel Bedell (Norway), Gerardo Rodriguez (Peru), Anibal Pabon (Puerto Rico), Danilo Velasevic (Serbia), Samuel Stranak (Slovakia), Bradley Moore (South Africa), Yohwan Lim (South Korea), Lautaro Guerra Cabrerizo(Spain), Viktor Blom (Sweden), Meng Ling "Candy" Lin (Taiwan), Baris Topuz (Turkey), Timur Makhamedaminov (Uzbekistan), Christian Roberts (Venezuela), and Nguyen Le (Vietnam).