Biggest WPT® Winners of Autumn 2025 (YTD)

Key Takeaways

• 2025’s biggest WPT® winners have already earned six-figure payouts and World Championship seats, with the five events combined totalling more than $16 million in prize pools across three continents.
• Breakout victories from Art Peacock and Nico Betbese led the year, while Haoran Sun’s win in Thailand marked a historic milestone for Asian poker.
• Consistent performers like Mike Vanier and Alexander Puchalski proved the WPT® Prime circuit remains a launchpad for rising international talent.
• With record fields, expanding regions, and multimillion-dollar prize pools, the 2025 WPT® season is shaping up as one of the tour’s most competitive yet.

Winners Leaderboard 

Art Peacock - $776,000

Event: WPT® Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown (May 30, 2025)

One of the biggest and most prestigious stops on the WPT® schedule, Seminole Hard Rock continues to draw record-breaking fields. This was one of the largest fields in Florida poker history, confirming Seminole’s reputation as the flagship WPT® stop east of Las Vegas.

The hotel casino in Hollywood, Florida delivered one of the biggest payouts of the year when Art Peacock topped a field of 1,755 players to score his first WPT® title.

The $776K win also came with a seat to the season-ending World Championship in Las Vegas. It wasn’t the first time Art Peacock has played at WPT®, with multiple appearances at Hard Rock Hollywood and one at WPT Prime Liechtenstein 2024.

Mihai Niste ($515K) and Daniel Marcus ($380K) rounded out the top three.

The 14% winner’s share reflects WPT®’s modern flatter payout model, which rewards deeper finishes.

Nico Betbese - $706,960

Event: WPT® Venetian Las Vegas (Jul 17, 2025)

The Argentinian poker player secured his first major WPT® headline title in convincing fashion in Las Vegas, in what might prove to be his breakout moment on the poker circuit. 

In what was the first career WPT® final table for all players involved, he took the chip lead and closed it out with a river ace call. The career-best win at one of the marquee Las Vegas stops has secured him a seat at the WPT® World Championship. 

As a result, his name will be engraved on the Mike Sexton WPT® Champions Cup, joining a roster of WPT Champions such as Phil Ivey and Brian Altman.

Betbese becomes the second Argentinian champion in three seasons, after Nacho Barbero’s run in 2023. 

Haoran Sun — ≈ $352,480

Event: WPT® Prime Thailand Exhibition (August 5, 2025)

In what was a landmark WPT® Prime event in Asia, the top spot went to former engineer turned poker player Haoran Sun, hailing from China. A standout achievement for the 33 year old, securing his first international title.

This was the first ever WPT® Prime Thailand exhibition, and the first time in poker history Thailand had hosted an international poker festival. Without doubt, a landmark WPT® Prime event for Asia, showcasing the growth of poker in Thailand and awarding non-traditional prizes. The 2,337 entries made it the second-largest Prime event in Asia this year, behind Vietnam, signalling rapid regional growth and confirming the shift of live-poker traffic toward Southeast Asia.

Considering the enormity of the event, Haoran looked dominant from the first day, and despite a setback putting him down to 400,000 chips, he managed to stay near the top of the chip counts throughout most of the championship.

Mike Vanier — $338,000

Event: WPT® Choctaw (May 2025)

A cornerstone stop of the WPT® U.S schedule was secured by American player Mike Vanier, taking home the first WPT® title of his career. It will serve as a significant win for Vanier, as Choctaw remains one of the tour’s most competitive mid-major stops.

However, he’s hardly a fresh face on the WPT® roster, as Vanier has come close to victory on previous WPT stops, with a record of deep cashes and solid consistency, notching a 2nd place in the WPT Venetian Las Vegas Main Event in 2022. 
After his win, he commented that he wanted to keep the pots small and play post-flop, which clearly worked out pretty well. His focus on small pots suits Choctaw’s deep-stack blind levels, where post-flop skill outweighs pre-flop variance.

Alexander Puchalski — $233,680

Event: WPT® Prime Cambodia (Jan 2025)

The year opened with a strong stop in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, and an even stronger first-place finish from Canadian player Alexander Puchalski. 

In a career-best live cash performance, he outlasted 1483 entries to bank himself a seat at the 2025 WPT® World Championship. 

At the final table, he used post-flop manoeuvring and well-timed aggression to navigate the late stages of the tournament. During that run, he played aggressively. For example, in one match, he check-raised with a flop of 7-4-2, turned a King, then bluffed on the river to go all in and won with a full house (7s).

With a decade of poker tournaments under his belt, the Canadian looks to have positioned himself as one to watch for the future, with the Prime stop also cementing Cambodia’s role as a key hub for Asian poker. 

The 1,483 entries represented a 20% increase from WPT® Prime Cambodia 2024, cementing Cambodia’s role as WPT®’s strongest Southeast Asian market outside Vietnam.

Summary

Across all five events, WPT® prize pools have surpassed $16.5 million, an increase of roughly 9% over the same period last year. 

The season’s mix of established U.S. venues and expanding Asian markets highlights poker’s continued global momentum heading into the World Championship.

If anything is for certain, we've got some exciting days ahead. 

More to come.