Leaderboard: 2022’s Top Tournament Circuit Earners

Points are nice, but what about cash? Only 10 players accumulated more than $5 million in POY earnings in 2022, with Card Player POY winner Stephen Chidwick ending the year with the fifth-highest earnings total.

The player sitting atop this leaderboard is none other than this year’s World Series of Poker main event champion Espen Jorstad, who cashed for more than $10.1 million across four POY-qualified scores this year. Of course, nearly all of that came when he topped the second-largest main event field in history, besting a turnout of 8,663 to earn $10 million. WSOP main event runner-up Adrian Attenborough also made this leaderboard thanks to the $6 million he pocketed from the big dance.

Jake Schindler was the only player outside of Jorstad to accrue more than $7 million in POY earnings, and he did so without any cashes from August through the close of the year. Schindler was one of the high-profile players accused of cheating this year, and was ultimately barred from PokerGO Tour events alongside last year’s POY winner Ali Imsirovic. But before being blacklisted from the high roller community, Schindler had been on a tear. First, he won the Super High Roller Bowl Europe for $3.2 million in April. Then, in a matter of days he finished second in a $25,000 event ($875,000) and won his first bracelet in a $50,000 event ($1.3 million) at the WSOP.

Rounding out the top three was Mikita Badziakouski with just shy of $6.9 million in POY earnings for 2022. The Belarusian tournament crusher recorded two seven-figure scores this year, with a $2,038,596 win in the EPT Barcelona €100,000 high roller and a $1,407,000 victory in a €50,000 buy-in at the Triton Series Madrid. Badziakouski’s strong performance this year helped him become just the eighth player in poker history to surpass $40 million in recorded earnings. ♠