The PokerGO Tour kicked off its 2025 season with the appropriately named PokerGO Tour (PGT) Kickoff Series. The series had five events, all of which were no-limit hold’em tournaments. Four of them had a buy-in of $5,100 while the fifth and final one had a buy-in of $10,100.
The PGT is a big event for the early part of the poker year and is held in Las Vegas, a city filled with live casino poker options as well as the options offered with online poker in Nevada.
The winners list ended up being a who’s who of poker with each player adding another impressive win to their already full resumes.
Foxen Wins Another Kickoff Event
Of the five winners, the most notable was Kristen Foxen, as she won the largest of the lot with a win in Event #5: $10,100 No-Limit Hold’em. She topped the 93-player field to win $197,625.
Incredibly, this is the second consecutive year that she has won this exact same event. This year was an even larger accomplishment as the field was nearly double the 50 players from the 2024 version of the event.
The final table was full of crushers, including Joao Simao, Stephen Song, and Jeremy Ausmus. While she began the final table with more than double the second-placed stack, her high-quality opponents did not go down without a fight.
Eventually, she would defeat the Brazilian pro Simao heads up after he clawed things back to almost even in chips before ultimately succumbing to Foxen.
Foxen is a recent 2024 inductee in the women’s poker hall of fame as she now sets her sights on the poker hall of fame itself. This win is actually somewhat of a milestone for Foxen as it puts her past $9 million in career earnings. She is solidly in second place in career live tournament earnings amongst women and only has to track down Vanessa Selbst’s $11.9 million.
Considering Foxen’s propensity to win and accumulate big scores, especially recently, I think it is safe to say she will be surpassing that mark in the not too distant future.
Lichtenberger and Leonard Among Other Winners
The first four events of the PGT Kickoff Series had $5,100 buy ins and had varying amounts of buy ins ranging from 84 to 126 entries.
Each event had a plethora of accomplished players who are all masters of No-Limit Hold’em strategy. The winners were all big names in the poker world as you might expect in such high profile events.
- Event #1 had 84 entries and was won by Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger for $117,600. It was his seventh career PGT title and first since 2023.
- Event #2 had 96 entries and was won by Patrick “Pads” Leonard for $124,800. It was the first PGT title for the popular English streamer and pro and his first live win since winning the WSOP Tag Team bracelet with Espen Jorstad in 2022.
- Event #3 had 112 entries and was won by Masato Yokosawa for $142,800. It was a big first title for the super popular “World Wide” Japanese streamer who can be credited with single handily bringing up the interest of poker in Japan over the last few years with a deep run in the 2023 WSOP Main Event (45th place finish).
- Event #4 was the largest event of the series with 126 entries. It was won by Spencer Champlin for $157,500. Perhaps a lesser known name than the others to the worldwide poker audience, Champlin is nevertheless an accomplished player as a regular around several poker tours in the USA. He is the all time money leader from the state of Maine with $3.7 million in career earnings.