5th Annual Global Poker Awards Winners Revealed

At an intimate a ceremony in Las Vegas attended by many of the luminaries of the game, Jeff Platt presided over the annual bestowal of honours that recognise the achievements of those who play, organise and make content about poker, online and live.

As such, the winners determined by leaderboard results were already known, but most were revealed during the live streamed award ceremony. 

Each category had a short list of four or five nominees and in traditional award ceremony style, host Jeff Platt brought guests on to reveal the winners. 

There are no losers at the GPI Awards, each category had very long initial short lists, which were trimmed down to the final few nominees in each category by the GPI Panel. 

To even get to this stage is quite an achievement for everyone nominated in every category.

The headline winners of the evening were Daniel Sepiol, for his WPT World Championship Final Table Performance, WPT CEO Adam Pliska for Best Industry Person and the World Series of Poker Main Event, for Best Event of the Year. 

Matt Savage seemed almost surprised that his tournament had fended off strong competition from the WPT Winter Festival duo of the WPT World Championship Main Event and the WPT Prime World Championship. In accepting the award Savage, the WSOP tournament diretcor made a passionate speech saying 

It was the biggest ever WSOP Main Event with 10,043 entries and Effel also revealed that the sum of all the buy-ins at the 2023 WSOP fell just $300 short of $500m.

After thanking everyone who needed to be thanks, he added 

While the World Poker Tour might have been quietly hoping that the WPT World Championship would scoop the best event award, little sister tour WPT Prime emerged victorious in the Mid-Major Tour category as Pliska’s award brought the tour’s trophy haul at this year’s awards up to two.

The Chip Race won Best Podcast for the second time in three years, recognising the combined talents of the Unibet Poker sponsored show’s hosts Barry Carter, David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney.

Greg "Goes All In" Liow provided enough energy to light up the Las vegas strip in his explosive and lightning quick visits to the stage, both to accept awards on behalf of absent others and for himself, for winning the final award of the night, the fans choice Personality of the Year award. Both Greg and Caitlin Comeskey won content gongs for the second year in a row, with Caitlin upgrading last year’s Best Newcomer to this year’s Best Short Content Producer.

On the playing side of things Stephen Chidwick secured the Players Choice for Toughest Opponent for the third year in a row and is the only player to ever receive this award. 

It was also a successful night for the PokerStars Live team, with EPT tournament director Toby Stone winning the TD trophy, a category he has been nominated in several times before. PokerStars Live also won Best Live Stream, which was collected by Francine Watson on behalf of the rest of the team who were unable to attend due to the EPT Paris festival being ongoing at the time.

Doyle Brunson, who passed away in 2023 was also honoured, both in a touching memorial video and as the inaugural recipient of the newly introduced Poker Icon award.