Fedor Holz, Chance Kornuth, and David Peters rank first, second, and third in the GPI Player of the Year leaderboard after its most recent update. In fact, Holz has been topping the ranking for twelve weeks now, and it cannot be any different, given the fact that the young German has won most of the major high roller tournaments to have taken place over the past several months.
Although Holz’s achievement is one that certainly deserves to be praised, the focus of this article falls on another player who reached his best GPI Player of the Year rank this week. With live tournament earnings of over $2 million, Sergey Lebedev is among Russia’s well-recognized poker names.
Following the GPI Player of the Year’s Wednesday update, Lebedev took 18th place, his best position since entering the ranking. The Russian has accumulated a total of 2,626.65 points for the past eight months. It is also good to mention that 2016 has been the player’s most profitable year since the beginning of his live poker career. Lebedev has earned $985,388 over the past eight months.
The player started 2016 with three in-the-money finishes during the EPT Season 12/UKIPT Season 5 Dublin poker festival. He made two final table appearances and finished 10th in another tournament, cashing a collective of a little more than €200,000 and adding over 600 points to his GPI PoY score.
Being an EPT regular, Lebedev did not miss the tour’s Grand Final in Monaco. There, he cashed in three events again. He earned around €340,000 in those and added almost 700 GPI PoY points.
In June and July, the Russian poker pro could be seen at the poker tables of Rio Hotel and Casino, where the WSOP annually takes place. He cashed in three tournaments on the poker festival’s schedule, winning $120,000 in these and more than 700 GPI PoY points.
Most recently, Lebedev took part in the EPT Season 13 opening festivities in Barcelona. He added three more in-the-money finishes to his cash history. The player scooped around €180,000 in those. He also added almost 620 GPI PoY points to his score.
With the 2,626.65 points he accumulated over the past eight months, Lebedev is ranking first among his fellow countrymen. As for his GPI position, he is now taking 46th place with 3,079.93 points, collected over a 36-month time span.
