For the second time in his career, Adrian Mateos has won the Card Player Player of the Year race. Mateos tops the podium again, joining Daniel Negreanu (2004, 2013) and Stephen Chidwick (2019, 2022) as the only two-time winners in the last 20 years. Mateos also accomplished the feat in 2017.
Having learned how to play Texas Hold’em from a very young age, Mateos has succeeded from the jump, with his first-ever recorded tournament cash coming in the form of a $42,399 win in a €600 Main Event in Madrid. Now, at just 30 years old, Mateos already has a Hall of Fame-worthy resume.
Mateos’ four WSOP bracelets are all incredibly special, notably having won the 2013 WSOP Europe Main Event at just 19 years old. Once he was allowed to play in Vegas, his dominance continued, winning the 1,840-entry $1,500 Summer Solstice in 2016, the 2017 $10,000 Heads-Up Championship, and the 2021 $250,000 Super High Roller.
Mateos has also claimed an EPT Main Event title, two Triton trophies (both in 2024), and has a famous partypoker MILLIONS Main Event title to his name. All-in-all, the Spaniard has earned an incredible 20 tournament victories in events with a buy-in of at least $10,000.
In 2024 alone, Mateos won $13,109,217, largely in part to his incredible run at Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Montenegro. He earned a total of five cashes in the 16-event series, winning the 159-entry $50,000 NLH event for $1,761,000 and finishing second in the 94-entry $200,000 NLH event for $3,292,000.
Mateos also won the 185-entry $30,000 NLH event at Triton Jeju earlier in the year for $1,175,000.
“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 said in an interview with Card Player.
“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 year and that made me one of the biggest winners of the year.”
Unlike many other pros, Mateos is constantly working on his poker tournament strategy, something that he believes has always put him in a position to succeed at the highest level.
“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.
“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.
“…This year the results were much, much better… It was the best year of my poker career by far.”
Mateos will have some work to do, as he currently sits in 8th place on The Hendon Mob’s career tournament earnings list at $52.4 million, nearly $21 million behind leader Bryn Kenney.
Kenney notably won the $125K Triton Monte Carlo Main Event in November for over $4.4 million to become the first player in poker history to accrue over $70 million in career live tournament earnings.