Song and Andrews Win GPI Players of the Year
At the beginning of December 2022, we took a look at the Player of the Year races via the Global Poker Index. At that point, the races were much too close to call, and the WPT World Championship and EPT Prague were just getting underway, among many other tournaments.
Adam Hendrix led the overall Player of the Year race with 3,514 points then, just ahead of Jeremy Ausmus with 3,482 points. Stephen Song was seventh in the rankings.
Julien Sitbon of France led the Mid-Majors POY race with 2,407 points, but Angela Jordison was very close with 2,404 points. Again, Stephen Song was seventh in those rankings.
And the Female POY listing showed Angela Jordison at the top with 2,483 points and Cherish Andrews in second with 2,233 points.
Oh, how things changed.
GPI POY 2022
Stephen Song overtook the six players in front of him in early December, and one month later, he had locked up first place as the overall Player of the Year. What put him over the top was his WPT Prime Championship win in Las Vegas for 422 points. He won that $1K buy-in tournament at Wynn Las Vegas for $712,650 on December 19.
That capped off a stellar year for Song, his best to date in the live poker realm. His previous best year had been 2019, when he claimed more than $1.1M in live tournament earnings. But he doubled that by taking home $2,282,059 in 2022. And it put his lifetime earnings at $4,986,333, just shy of the $5M mark.
The final standings for the main POY category were:
- Stephen Song (USA) 3,543.72 points
- Adam Hendrix (USA) 3,526.48 points
- Jeremy Ausmus (USA) 3,497.47 points
- Chad Eveslage (USA) 3,474.78 points
- Farid Jattin (Colombia) 3,466.67 points
- Michael Watson (Canada) 3,429.44 points
- Chance Kornuth (USA) 3,423.68 points
- Alex Foxen (USA) 3,393.09 points
- Sean Winter (USA) 3,393.05 points
- Stephen Chidwick (UK) 3,323.61 points
GPI Female POY 2022
The Global Poker Index categorizes players who identify as female to track them in their own category in addition to the broader categories. Considering the relatively low number of women in poker, it’s appropriate to give them kudos for their performances in a game in which they were mostly unwelcome for decades.
This race went down to the wire, but Cherish Andrews pulled it off. She dominated at the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, with a $1K event win, second in a high roller, and sixth in another one. Those performances gave her the status of WPT Player of the Festival for the December series.
In addition, the December scores pushed her to the top spot on the leaderboard. Her 2022 live tournament earnings came to $758,513, bringing her lifetime total to $1,489,333.
This also catapulted her to the top of the Female POY list. Angela Jordison had a rare opportunity to reclaim that top spot and came close by final tabling the Mid-States Poker Tour’s MSPT Venetian in Las Vegas in the very last days of the year. She finished in fifth place, just missing the POY requisite number of points by two places at that final table.
The final standings for women were:
- Cherish Andrews (USA) 2,835.14 points
- Angela Jordison (USA) 2,612.37 points
- Kristen Bicknell (Canada) 2,229.83 points
- Jessica Vierling (Germany) 2,101.94 points
- Christina Gollins (USA) 2,056.18 points
- Victoria Livschitz (USA) 2,048.69 points
- Elanit Hasas (USA) 1,878.97 points
- Gaelle Baumann (France) 1,750.03 points
- Thi Xoa Nguyen (Vietnam) 1,708.51 points
- Valerie Novak (USA) 1,696.03 points
GPI Mid-Majors POY 2022
Remember Stephen Song? The overall Player of the Year also won the category to award players for their play in mid-majors. Song played the gamut in 2022, with buy-ins ranging from $400 to $10K. That put his results on the overall leaderboard but also in line for the Mid-Majors Player of the Year.
Jordison climbed past Julien Sitbon to take the top spot, but she couldn’t beat Song’s WPT Prime Championship victory. She tried with her MSPT final table in the last days of 2022, but she fell short by a few dozen points in the end. Song added another award by taking down the Mid-Major POY.
- Stephen Song (USA) 2,580.18 points
- Angela Jordison (USA) 2,539.93 points
- Julien Sitbon (France) 2,415.10 points
- Jared Ingles (USA) 2,399.08 points
- Donovan Dean (USA) 2,317.11 points
- Mehdi Chaoui (Morocco) 2,315.74 points
- Paul Tedeschi (France) 2,313.86 points
- Viliyan Petleshkov (Bulgaria) 2,296.73 points
- David Erquiaga (Philippines) 2,292.80 points
- Eduard Barsegyan (Russia) 2,256.58 points
National POYs
The Global Poker Index tracks tournament performances by gender as well as nationality. It allows players to compete against others from their own country to see who bests the rest each year. This year, there are 79 National Player of the Year winners. (Countries were not included if no player claiming that nationality scored at least one thousand qualifying GPI points in the year.)
Among the winners, some familiar names popped up:
- Argentina POY: Jose “Nacho” Barbero
- Belarus POY: Mikita Bodyakovsky
- Belgium POY: Davidi Kitai
- Brazil POY: Yuri Dzivielevski
- Canada POY: Mike Watson
- Colombia POY: Farid Jattin
- France POY: Julien Sitbon
- Germany POY: Koray Aldemir
- India POY: Ankit Ahuja
- Italy POY: Michael Rossitto
- Israel POY: Yuval Bronshtein
- Malaysia POY: Paul Phua
- Norway POY: Espen Uhlen Jorstad
- Spain POY: Sergio Aido
- Sweden POY: Anton Wigg
- Taiwan POY: Pete Chen
- UK POY: Stephen Chidwick
It almost goes without saying, but Stephen Song did capture the USA National POY award in addition to his others.
🏆♣️ GPI Players of the Year Announced ♣️🏆
🥇 Stephen @songstephen11 Song 🇺🇸 captures two titles
🥇 Cherish @CherishAndrews Andrews 🇺🇸 wins Female PoY
🌐 79 players named National PoYs
📝 https://t.co/iveyF0VZRM pic.twitter.com/xmJU45btVe— Global Poker Index (@gpi) January 4, 2023
