Thailand’s Punnat Punsri Wins 2025 GPI Player of the Year

Punnat Punsri has been named the 2025 GPI Participant of the Yr. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

Punsri, Foxen, Lakhdari win massive

The International Poker Index (GPI) has simply launched its full checklist of winners for 2025, and on the prime of the invoice, Thailand’s Punnat Punsri is the Participant of the Yr. Because of a late December third-place end within the World Poker Tour $25,000 Excessive Curler on the Wynn Las Vegas, he narrowly pipped final 12 months’s GPI PoY runner-up Jesse Lonis.

first Asian participant to win the GPI PoY honors

Punsri loved a barnstorming 12 months, incomes nearly $11m on the stay circuit as he booked big outcomes on the Triton Poker Sequence, the World Sequence of Poker, EPT Barcelona, and APPT Taiwan. In doing so, he grew to become the primary Asian participant to win the GPI PoY honors. He additionally retains his crown as Thailand’s Nationwide Participant of the Yr, a title he has held since 2021.

For the fifth time within the final eight years, the GPI Feminine PoY award goes to Kristen Foxen, who loved a snug margin of victory over final 12 months’s winner Cherish Andrews. Foxen additionally gained her second Canadian Nationwide PoY title and is #1 on the Girls’s All-Time Cash Listing, having now accrued extra stay event winnings than Vanessa Selbst.

Within the Mid-Main PoY class, awarded to the participant who had essentially the most success in buy-ins underneath $2,500, the 2025 winner is Omar Lakhdari, who nudged out Evan Sandberg. With a whopping 9 podium finishes, together with a WSOP Circuit Primary Occasion victory and WPT Prime title, Lakhdari additionally took down the Algeria Nationwide PoY for the eighth time and third time in a row.

GPI Nationwide Gamers of the Yr

The brink for eligibility within the Nationwide PoY races is 1,000 GPI factors and in 2025, gamers from 93 nations certified. Notable winners included Lonis (USA), Nacho Barbero (Argentina), Christian Roberts (Venezuela), Pedro Padilha (Brazil), Thomas Szwarcberg (Mexico), Fabrizio Gonzales (Uruguay), Nick Yunis (Chile), Carlos Serrano (Colombia), Michael Acevedo (Costa Rica), and Gerardo Rodriguez (Peru).

On the opposite facet of the pond, European winners embody Stephen Chidwick (UK), Daniel Rezaei (Austria), Mikita Bodyakovsky (Belarus), Thomas Boivin (Belgium), Alex Reard (France), Christoph Vogelsang (Germany), Joao Vieira (Portugal), Baris Topuz (Turkey), Viktor Blom (Sweden), Toby Joyce (Eire), Tobias Peters (Netherlands), Lautaro Cabrerizo (Spain), Aleksejs Ponakovs (Latvia), Matas Cimbolas (Lithuania), Matthew Micallef (Malta), Dinesh Alt (Switzerland), Adrian State (Romania), Blaz Zerjab (Slovenia), Igor Yaroshevskyy (Ukraine), Fahredin Mustafov (Bulgaria), Yiannis Liperis (Cyprus), Pavel Plesuv (Moldova), Giorgiy Skhuluhiya (Georgia), and Alexandros Theologis (Greece).

In the remainder of the world, winners included Danny Tang (Hong Kong), Quan Zhou (China), Kahle Burns (Australia), Artur Martirosyan (Russia), Meng Ling Lin (Taiwan), Timur Makhamedaminov (Uzbekistan), Gilbert Tin Fook (Mauritius), Bradley Moore (South Africa), Yohwan Lim (South Korea), Maher Achour (Tunisia), and Nguyen Le (Vietnam). Chidwick gained his nationwide prize for the tenth time, Yunis for a ninth straight time, whereas Barbero, Vieira, Yaroshevskyy, and Liperis all clocked their eighth victories. Cimbolas notched his seventh; Bodyakovsky, Plesuv and Tang, their sixth.

No International Poker Awards

Sadly, there will likely be no International Poker Awards in 2026, following an announcement made by GPI/The Hendon Mob Database President Eric Danis in mid-November.

we now have different initiatives which have taken precedence over the awards”

“We’re a really small staff and the awards course of as an entire takes two members of our staff out of the day-to-day operations for 2 months yearly…We’re definitely going to overlook placing on a fantastic present, however we now have different initiatives which have taken precedence over the awards.”

Just a few different entities have hinted at the opportunity of doing awards to honor the trade figures, content material creators, breakout gamers, and others. Time will inform if the very best and brightest of 2025 will likely be celebrated at “The Polkies,” “The InGrammies,” or “The Orgies.” Within the meantime, it’s value acknowledging the large and thankless work executed by Danis and his staff over time. It is usually value recognizing their continued contribution with these GPI awards.