Adrian Mateos Wins 2024 Card Player Player Of The Year Race

For the second time in the past decade, Adrian Mateos finished atop the final rankings in the annual Card Player Player of the Year race presented by Global Poker. Eight years after earning his first POY award in 2017, the 30-year-old Spanish poker pro strung together 21 final table finishes, earning three titles and cashing for more than $11 million in POY earnings on his way to securing the 2024 POY honors.

With this win, Mateos became just the third player to have earned the award multiple times in the post-Moneymaker era, joining the likes of Poker Hall of Famer Daniel Negreanu (2004, 2013) and Stephen Chidwick (2019, 2022).

“To become a multi-time Player of the Year award winner means a lot to me because I think, in poker, consistency is one of the most important skills and the key to success. I’m very proud of being able to win in multiple years,” Mateos told Card Player after sealing the deal.

Mateos has been a top player on the circuit since before he was allowed to play in most American casinos, having earned his first big live victory by taking down the 2013 World Series of Poker Europe main event at the age of 19.

Over the past decade, Mateos has not failed to finish inside the top 200 in the year-end POY standings. Six of the past ten years he has ended up inside the top 20, with two outright wins along the way. While this was his largest year yet, in terms of earnings, Mateos didn’t attribute that uptick in prize money to any particular improvement in his game.

“I didn’t do anything too special this year. I think I am at a really high level right now, but I already reached this level by working very hard for more than 12 years. Compound interest works like this. When you do the right thing for many years, at one point everything aligns… luck and preparation meet and you get a really good result. This year has been luckier than other years and that made me one of the biggest winners of the year.“

Mateos is a four-time WSOP bracelet winner, a European Poker Tour main event champion, and two-time Triton Poker victor. While his trophy case keeps expanding, Mateos is not fixated on capturing a particular piece of hardware.

“My goal in poker has been always the same, which is to be a better player every day. That’s my main goal. I try to work every day towards improving in every aspect of my game technically and also improving in live poker as well. That’s the main goal. But also I want to have really good results. I already have many of the most important trophies in the world, but I want to keep winning more and more.”

With $54.5 million in total career earnings, Mateos is now ranked seventh on poker’s all-time money list. He trails current leader Bryn Kenney ($74.1 million) by just over $19.5 million but hopes one day to overcome that deficit and claim the top spot.

“One of my biggest goals, which I know will be pretty difficult to achieve, but I will try, is to be number one on the all-time money list. I need many more years of working really hard, but I will be there. Let’s see what happens.”

At 30, Mateos is the youngest player inside the top 10 on the tournament earnings leaderboard. His place on that prestigious list was bolstered by his huge eight-figure year on the circuit in 2024. Without further ado, here is a closer look at Mateo’s POY-winning run over the past 12 months.

How Mateos Captured His Second Card Player POY Title

Mateos did not record a single live cash during the month of January last year. He made up for lost time with a trio of final-table finishes in high roller events at EPT Paris, recording a sixth-place finish in the €10,200 mystery bounty followed by a pair of runner-up showings in €25,000 buy-in tournaments. All told, he accrued $511,920 and 830 POY points across those scores.

His first outright win of the year came at the Triton Jeju festival. He beat out a field of 185 entries in the $30,000 eight-max event to earn $1,175,000 and 1,176 points. This was his first-ever Triton title. He managed one more cash at that series, placing third in a $40,000 mystery bounty event for another $381,000 and 784 points.

Mateos’ best month of the year was undoubtedly May. While he managed one final-table finish at EPT Monte Carlo (sixth place in a €25,000 for $63,504 and 112 points), the real heavy lifting was done at Triton Montenegro. Mateos shared with Card Player that this fortnight was his favorite stretch of the year.

“I ran insanely good, making four final tables, winning one title, and earning the biggest cash of my career,” he noted. "Also, I played some cash games and had good results in those, too. It was a crazy two weeks and right after that, I went to play poker online and had my two biggest online scores in the same week. So, it was like super crazy three weeks for me, one of the craziest [runs] of my career.”

His first score at the series was a relatively tame sixth-place finish in a $25,000 buy-in for $209,500 and 364 points. Four days later he finished in the same spot in a $50,000 buy-in bounty event, adding another $245,000 and 374 points. His final two scores were the real highlights, though.

One day removed from the $50,000 bounty final table, Mateos came out on top of a field of 159 entries in another $50,000 buy-in, earning his second Triton trophy along with $1,761,000 and 1,224 points. He soon hopped into the $200,000 eight-max main event, drew 93 entries to create a $18.6 million prize pool. He navigated his way to heads-up play, ultimately finishing second for $3,292,000 and 900 points. This narrowly edged out the $3,265,362 he earned as the 2021 WSOP $250,000 buy-in event champion to become his new highest payday.

Mateos managed two final-table finishes at the WSOP in Las Vegas. His first deep run came in a $50,000 buy-in eight-max event, in which he placed fourth for $681,554 and 663 points. During the final days of the series he placed fifth in the $10,000 buy-in six-max event for another $198,261 and 875 points.

When asked if any close calls stood out for him in 2024, Mateos pinpointed his tenth-place finish in the $250,000 buy-in at the series. “It was like $5 million for first and I was chip-leading with 12 left and busted in 10th place. So that was hard, a little bit, but made less hard because I just came from the best moment of my career one month earlier.”

While the WSOP was running, Mateos did manage one other final table finish in Las Vegas, placing second in a $10,500 high roller at ARIA for $85,000 and 200 points.

The next top on Mateos’ global high-stakes itinerary was in Cyprus, which hosted this year’s Super High Roller Bowl series. He made four final table finishes during the 10-event festival, placing fourth or higher across that selection of results. He kicked things off with a runner-up finish in a $25,750 buy-in ($231,000 and 350 points), then placed third the following day ($262,000 and 272 points). He then recorded two final-table results on the same day, finishing fourth in the $100,000 buy-in for $420,000 and 240 points before taking down the $25,750 mystery bounty for $162,000 and 420 points.

His run in Cyprus added 1,282 points and $1,075,000 in POY earnings to his haul. With that, he entered the fall months in pole position in the points race.

The final third of the year saw Mateos add only four more POY-qualified cashes. Three of those came at the EPT Cyprus series in October. He finished third in a $25,000 buy-in for $198,400 and 280 points. A few days later, he ended in the same spot in the $50,000 buy-in for $555,758 and 340 points. His penultimate final-table finish of 2024 saw him place second in another $25,000 buy-in, cashing for $258,100 and 350 points.

Mateos told Card Player that most of his live poker trips in 2024 were profitable, with the marked exception of the Triton Monte Carlo series towards the end of the year. He managed just two cashes, including one final-table finish. His fourth-place showing in the $30,000 turbo bounty event earned him $313,000 and 420 points to bring his final total to 10,174 points.

The final playing destination of 2024 for Mateos was the WSOP Paradise in The Bahamas. He cashed in three events, with his deepest run being an 11th-place finish in the $500,000 buy-in Triton Million Invitational. From there, he headed off to spend time with his family over the holidays and rest ahead of his next campaign.

“The year was tiring for sure, but I’m used to it. This year wasn’t too different from the previous 12 years of my poker career. I have been always on the road, traveling a lot and playing a lot of hours. And this year the results were much, much better… It was the best year of my poker career by far,” said Mateos.

“I just want to keep playing and keep winning. Being tired has never been something that would stop me. So until I lose the motivation, I will keep playing a lot of hours. My goal is to be one of the best poker players in the world and that requires a lot of work, and I’m ready to put in all the effort.”

Check out our in-depth look at the players who finished inside the top ten in the 2024 POY race final standings, broken into the 10th-6th place finishers and the 5th-2nd ranked contenders.

Mateos’ Top Ten Scores of 2024:

A look at the top 20 in the final 2024 POY race standings:

The Complete List of Card Player Player of the Year Winners:

Header photo credits: Danny Maxwell/Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd., Joe Giron/Triton Poker, and WPT.

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