With last year’s PokerGO Tour Freeroll Championship still fresh in the minds of anyone who won money in Las Vegas, the race to make this year’s PGT Top 40 on the leaderboard is well and truly on. Over the past seven months, many qualifying events on the PGT have seen players rack up leaderboard points, including at the WSOP. The winner of the Main Event, Jonathan Tamayo, scored a vast number of points by winning the biggest World Championship in history, but he isn’t top of the PGT Leaderboard… so who is?

Close But No Cigar

Only the top 40 players make the grade, so making that final cut and grabbing the chance at winning some of the million-dollar freeroll prizepool on offer is vital. Missing out on the top 40 places so far are some big names, with Jonathan Little (54^th with 657 points), Ren Lin (51^st with 678 points) and Sean Winter (46^th on 702 points) all a touch behind 40^th-placed player Diogo Coelho on 800 PGT Points.

Inside the top 40 but in serious threat of losing their places are some legends of the game, with Stephen Chidwick (870 points), Danny Tang (881 points), Justin Saliba (887 points), Sergio Aido (905 points) and Phil Ivey (931 points) all outside the top 30. A little higher up but not in the top half, Scott Seiver (1,003 points), Chance Kornuth (1,041) and Chis Hunichen (1,064) will be taking nothing for granted.

Outside the top 10 but looking good for a spot in the event, Nick Schulman (1,107) may have to avoid commentary duties if he runs deep, while Brian Rast (1,196 points), Santhosh Suvarna (1,207 points) and Swedish players Viktor Blom (1,246 points) and Niklas Astedt (1,302 points) all look to have a superb chance of making the annual event in early January.

Who Won the Event in 2023?

On January 11 this year, German player Daniel Smiljkovic won the inaugural PGT Championship Freeroll, taking the $500,000 top prize home to Germany when he beat actress Arden Cho heads-up. At a super-strong final table of six, Cho won $200,000, third-placed Leon Sturm ($120,000) also took six figures back home to Germany, while the 2023 world champion Daniel Weinman came fourth for $80,000.

Surprisingly, none of those six sit inside the current top 10, with Canadian player Kristen Foxen (1,336 points), WSOP Main Event runner-up Jordan Griff (1,350 points) and PokerStake favorite David Coleman (1,357 points) all just inside the top 10 places. Dylan Weisman’s strong mixed game results in 2024 have propelled him up to seventh on the current leaderboard with 1,405 points, while Aram Zobian (1,438 points) has looked dominant so many times in 2024. Already looking like a lock to make the cut, Zobian – who often sells pieces of his action on PokerStake will be a terrific bet to run deep.

Inside the top five places, it’s no surprise to see PokerGO favorite and six-time WSOP bracelet winner Jeremy Ausmus in the mix. Ausmus has 1,499 points and has already earned $3.5m on the PGT. Daniel Negreanu (1,660 points) is ahead of his great rival by a small margin, after winning the $50,000 Poker Players Championship a month ago. Just ahead of ‘Kid Poker’ is Jesse Lonis (1,713 points), who again continues to remind everyone just what a consistent winner he is at the highest level.

Who Sits Ahead of the World Champion?

While the 2024 World Series of Poker Main Event winner Jonathan Tamayo has an incredible 1,730 PGT Points to his name, the current world champion is not top of the pile. That’s because the leader has 1,835 and it is Tamayo’s fellow American Michael Rocco who sits prettiest at present.

Rocco has an abnormally high 23 cashes in ranking events in total according to The Hendon Mob, with a vast number of those results coming in the most recent World Series of Poker. Rocco, who finished second in the WSOP Player of the Year race, came third twice and won the $10,000-entry six-max Championship to bank over $2.1 million in winnings during the 2024 WSOP alone.

With just five months to make the final 40 in the race to play the PokerGO Tour Championship Freeroll, can Rocco hold on to top spot? Points will be worth chips come the final showdown at the start of 2025 and with another million dollars on the line, the race to make the cut is officialy on.