The Card Player Player of the Year race is as tight as it has been in years. As of October 15, 2026, Thailand's Punnat Punsri leads with 7,624 points, but American Nick Schulman trails by just 68 and Brandon Wilson by 137. Alex Foxen sits 275 back. With a little over two months of the season left, Card Player describes the race as "one of the most competitive in recent memory," and the numbers back that up.
This is separate from the WSOP Player of the Year race, which is decided at WSOP Paradise in December, and from the GPI rankings we have covered elsewhere. The Card Player award rewards results across the whole live tournament calendar, which makes it a measure of consistency across series, venues and buy-in levels.
The current top ten
According to Card Player's standings as of October 15, the top ten look like this:
| Rank | Player | Points | Titles | Final tables | POY winnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Punnat Punsri (Thailand) | 7,624 | 4 | 25 | $6,539,867 |
| 2 | Nick Schulman (USA) | 7,556 | 3 | 13 | $6,246,014 |
| 3 | Brandon Wilson (USA) | 7,487 | 4 | 21 | $7,503,046 |
| 4 | Alex Foxen (USA) | 7,349 | 5 | 13 | $4,679,256 |
| 5 | Eelis Parssinen (Finland) | 7,000 | 3 | 14 | $6,503,084 |
| 6 | Daniel Rezaei (Austria) | 6,752 | 1 | 11 | $5,959,432 |
| 7 | Jesse Lonis (USA) | 6,637 | 1 | 15 | $4,743,887 |
| 8 | Danny Tang (Hong Kong) | 6,289 | 1 | 14 | $7,632,662 |
| 9 | Daniel Dvoress (Canada) | 5,892 | 7 | 13 | $7,885,714 |
| 10 | Klemens Roiter (Austria) | 5,625 | 2 | 13 | $5,847,566 |
Behind them, Card Player lists Josh Reichard, Ren Lin, Maurice Hawkins, Bryn Kenney, Adrian Mateos, Kristen Foxen, Artur Martirosian, Justin Liberto, Aleksejs Ponakovs and Fahredin Mustafov in 11th through 20th.
Three different routes to the top
What makes the table fascinating is that the leaders got there in very different ways. Punsri has the most final tables in the top ten, with 25, and four titles. That is the profile of a volume-and-consistency player who keeps turning up deep in fields. His $6.5 million in POY winnings is solid, but it is not the biggest in the group.
Wilson's profile is different: four titles, 21 final tables and $7.5 million. He is the only player in the top three whose earnings clearly outpace his points, which tells you he has converted plenty of high-buy-in results. His $1,125,000 win in Super High Roller Bowl XI, covered in our Brandon Wilson report, is the sort of result that moves a leaderboard.
Foxen, meanwhile, has the most titles of anyone in the top ten except Dvoress, with five, but only 13 final tables. He wins when he gets there, but he has fewer chances than Punsri. Dvoress is the extreme version of this pattern: seven titles, 13 final tables, and $7.9 million, yet he sits ninth because his points total is 5,892, some 1,732 behind the leader. Titles are rewarded, but volume of deep runs clearly matters in this formula.
The gaps, in plain numbers
Card Player lists the gaps to the lead as follows: Schulman 68 points, Wilson 137, Foxen 275, Parssinen 624, Rezaei 872 and Lonis 987. The top three are separated by less than 140 points.
To put the 68-point gap in perspective, consider what a single result can be worth. At the recent WSOP Circuit Pompano Beach Main Event, winner Robert Gianquitti collected 960 Card Player POY points for his $248,632 first-place finish; second place earned 800 and third earned 640. One deep run in a mid-sized event can therefore dwarf the entire gap between first and second. The race is not decided by who is ahead today; it is decided by who gets the next big result.
Parssinen, at 624 back, is still a live contender but would need a significant score. Beyond him, Rezaei and Lonis would need to win a major event and have the leaders stumble.
What's left on the calendar
Card Player notes that just over two months remain in 2026. The events it highlights are the final Triton Super High Roller Series stop, the World Series of Poker Paradise, the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, EPT Prague, and other major events. The author expects high-roller events in November and December to matter most.
That calendar favors a certain type of player. High rollers, with larger fields' worth of points compressed into fewer events, can swing the board quickly. Wilson and Foxen, who live in that world, may have an edge in the late-season sprint. Punsri's route is different: he has tended to pile up final tables, so a quiet couple of weeks could cost him ground, but sustained activity could protect his lead.
Our coverage of the WSOP Paradise 2026 schedule and the WPT World Championship at the Wynn shows how many large-buy-in events are still ahead. The tournaments hub tracks the series that feed this race.
How POY races actually get decided
A few general observations are worth making, clearly as analysis rather than reported fact.
First, leaderboard formulas tend to reward both quantity and quality. A player with 25 final tables has multiple chances to bank points, while a player with fewer final tables needs more of them to be wins. Second, late-season leaderboards often favor players who travel to every available festival. Third, with the top three inside 140 points, a single bubble or a single heads-up loss can reorder the table.
Variance plays an enormous role here. Even the best tournament players win a small fraction of the events they enter. Over a long season, skill shows up in the aggregate, but the final weeks are inherently a lottery among those in position. That is why watching which events each contender plans to enter is more informative than the current rankings.
What this means for players and fans
For fans, the practical takeaway is that the next few weeks will be unusually watchable. Every Triton, WSOP Paradise, WPT and EPT final table could carry POY implications. For recreational players interested in the strategy side, this race is also a reminder of how tournament success is built: not on single wins, but on putting yourself in position repeatedly, which depends on sound bankroll management and a feel for ICM at the final table.
Keep an eye on the standings after each major result. If you follow tournament poker through TV and streams, the POY storyline gives context to every big hand, and with Punsri, Schulman, Wilson and Foxen this close, there is a lot of context to go around.