The Global Poker Index (GPI) today announced the winners of their wide array of Player of the Year honors for 2024. The largest honor of all goes to New Jersey's David Coleman, who emerged from what was a tight three-way race with Jesse Lonis and Adrian Mateos to top the GPI's year-long global leaderboard.
Coleman finished with 4,383.70 GPI points during 2024, just 9.32 points ahead of Lonis's 4,374.39 tally, with Mateos also over the 4,300 mark. Though narrowly eclipsed for the POY honor, Lonis continues to lead the rolling GPI global leaderboard heading into 2025 action.
Other major GPI awards went to Cherish Andrews and Han Feng. Andrews collected her second career GPI Female Player of the Year, joining her win in 2022, by narrowly eclipsing two-time defending GPI Female POY winner Kristen Foxen. Andrews also came close to winning the 2024 GPI Mid-Major POY honor but finished as the runner-up in that category to Texas native Han Feng.
In all three categories, the winners were determined by totaling the players' top 13 finishes in 2024 for GPI leaderboard points, with the Mid-Major award limited to tourneys with buy-ins of $2,500 or less.
Familiar names populate National POY list
Players from 90 different countries led their nation's players in GPI points while also accumulating at least 1,000 points during 2024, including global POY winner Coleman.
For the tenth consecutive year, Columbia's Farid Jattin topped all Colombian players in GPI points, and he's still the only Colombian player to win a GPI National POY honor. Spain's Mateos and England's Stephen Chidwick won their country's POY honor for a ninth time, and Nick Yunis, a native of Chile now residing in Florida, won his eighth national award. Several players logged their seventh national points honor by leading their nations for 2024.
On the opposite end of the scale, three players won their countries' first-ever GPI National POY honors by topping the 1,000-point mark. The three were Afghanistan's Amani Ezatulla, Iceland's Steinn Thanh Du Karlsson, and Jersey's Eddie Quinn. 11 players, led by Coleman and Mateos, amassed over 3,000 GPI points during 2024 while also topping their countries' players in GPI points.
The complete list of the GPI's 2024 National POY honorees can be found in GPI's announcement of all 2024 award winners. Coleman, Andrews, and Feng will be invited to attend the 2024 GPI Awards ceremony in Las Vegas to receive their honors in person.