Kristen Foxen has won her fourth Global Poker Index Female Player of the Year Award for her consistently impressive play in 2023. Bin Weng and Nick Pupillo join her as Player of the Year winners in the general and mid-major categories, the first time either player ended the year at the top of the lists.
Four for Foxen
With 2,970.93 points, Kristen Foxen won her fourth GPI Female Payer of the Year. She first won it in 2017, and then went back-to-back in 2019 and 2020 while carrying the last name Bicknell.
According to the Hendon Mob, she cashed 36 times in 2023, made 13 final tables, and won her third World Series of Poker bracelet in the $888 Crazy Eights online event. Her best cash in 2023 was for $216,079 she got for finishing second in a $10,000 event at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in August.
She has more than $6.8 million in lifetime cashes, which puts her 14th on the all-time list for Canadian players.
Behind Foxen by 403.96 points was 2022 GPI Female Player of the Year Nadya Magnus, with 2023 GPI Female Player of the Year Cherish Andrews finishing 890.42 points behind in fifth.
Bin Weng wins first
Poker fans could be forgiven if they never heard of Bin Weng at the end of 2022, but that would immediately change the first week of 2023 after the newly-minted GPI Player of the Year took down the $5,300 The Return: A Borgata Championship Event for his first $1 million score.
It was the first of six wins in 2023:
- January: $5,300 The Return — $1 million
- February: $1,700 WSOP Circuit Main Event in Las Vegas — $227,344
- April: $3,500 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown — $1,128,250
- July: $10,000 WPT EveryOne for One Drop — $2,227,054
- October: $1,100 Mystery Bounty event at the Wynn Fall Classic — $147,078
- December: $25,300 WPT World Championship High Roller event — $958,279
According to the Hendon Mob, Weng won $6.6 million in 2023, after starting the year with a little over $1 million in lifetime tournament cashes. If his hot streak continues in 2024, he will roar past the $9 million lifetime mark sometime this spring.
His 55 cashes in 2023 gave him 5,008.99 points, 621.27 points in front of runner-up Jose Ignacio Barbero, who continues to build his lifetime tournament bounty mountain that now sits at $17.2 million.
Nick Pupillo hangs on to win mid-majors honor
The race for GPI’s Player of the Year in the mid-majors category was much tighter, but Nick Pupillo held on and won it by finishing just 67.03 points in front of Preston McEwen.
The mid-major category only counts tourneys with buy-ins of $2,500 or less. Pupillo been banging out poker victories and cashes mostly in this world since 2014.
In 2023, he cashed 53 times with a vast majority of them coming in tourneys in the mid-major category. He won his third WSOP Circuit ring online in November ($1,000 event for $36,974), and his first bracelet this summer in the $2,500 Mixed Triple Draw Lowball event for $181,978.
This isn’t the first Player of the Year prize for Pupillo. He won the Heartland Poker Tour’s top honor in 2019.
Pupillo, Weng, and Foxen can pick up their trophies at the GPI Awards, which will take place sometime in Las Vegas in the next few months. Last year’s ceremony took place in March. They’ll join dozens and dozens of other GPI Award winners in categories such as Breakout Player, Final Table Performance of the Year, Event of the Year, and so forth.
