The 2018 live tournament top earners’ list has been released by the Hendon Mob, and there’s no surprise at the top. Last year was all about Justin Bonomo.
In 2017, American poker pro Bryn Kenney topped the list in terms of live tournament winnings with $8.5 million. Next year – while Kenney came in 19th with a respectable $5.5 million – another American, Justin Bonomo tripled that score and tallied $25.4 million in cashes.
The Sickest Poker Run of All Time
Nobody has ever won as much money on poker in a year as Bonomo did in 2018.
The man started the year with a second place finish for over $1 million in the PCA Super High Roller in the Bahamas. Later that month, he won the 2018 Lucky Hearts Poker Open Super High Roller for over $500,000. Then the real big scores started coming in.
He triumphed in the Macau Super High Roller Bowl in March for $4.8 million. Then he claimed two EPT championships for a combined $750,000 in May.
A few weeks later he won the $300K Aria Super High Roller Bowl, pocketing $5 million. And then, finally, the biggest cash of his entire career came. He finished first in the $1 million buy-in WSOP Big One for One Drop, earning his third gold bracelet as well as another $10 million.
With that sum, he overtook Daniel Negreanu – the player he battled heads-up for the Aria SHRB – on Hendon’s All-time Money list. That means no-one has won more money on live poker tournaments than Justin Bonomo in the history of the game. Bonomo has cashed for $43,463,089 total over the course of his career.
His whopping $25.4 million run in 2018 was a result of a total of 28 cashes, 10 of which were first place finishes.
The biggest poker winners 2018
At second place on Hendon’s 2018 list is the Belarusian Nikita Bodyakovskiy. “Fish2013”, as he’s known online, is over $10 million behind Bonomo – another piece of information that shows the record breaker’s dominance.
Bodyakovskiy has won over $14 million on live tourneys last year. That includes his victory at the Triton Super High Roller Bowl in Jeju for $5.25 million.
“Fish2013” is one of the few non-Americans on this American-dominated list. In fact, out of the top 10, only two players don’t come from the United States. The British Stephen Chidwick and the aforementioned Bodyakovskiy.
Germany, the country who is usually represented by many players in the high roller scene, didn’t give as stellar a showing as one might have expected. While last year 3 out the top 5 tournament earners were German; this year, their highest ranked player was the retired Fedor Holz at 13th place with $6.2 million.
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