Zhen Chen Overtakes Matthew Wantman on the Final Day to top GPI’s October Player of the Month

LAS VEGAS, November 08th, 2024—The Global Poker Index (GPI) announces China’s Zhen Chen is the GPI Player of the Month for October 2024. Zhen scooped up two wins and a deep run in the Asian Poker Tour Manila Main Event to edge PokerGO Tour’s PLO Series II champion Matthew Wantman on the month’s final day.

Zhen racked up 1,144.51 GPI points for his best five results in October. It was a close race at the top of the October leaderboard, with Matthew just eight points back and Portugal’s Diogo Coelho less than 30 points behind.

Zhen (GPI #2,169 / PoY #1,474) had eight results throughout October, totalling $255,987 as he travelled across Europe and Asia. Zhen began the month earning his career-best live tournament score of $99,780 after winning the High Roller Mystery Bounty at Poker Dream 12 Jeju. Zhen continued his run into EPT Cyprus and APPT Manila, where he picked up his second win of the month at the APPT Manila National. Dramatically, with the APT Manila Main Event beginning on October 31st, Zhen finished in 16th place of 1,081 entries to slide past Matthew for the top spot.

ZHEN CHEN SCORECARD – OCTOBER 2024

It was a genuinely global Top 10 in October, as seven countries were represented as the top-performing players of the month. China had three players on the leaderboard, France had two, while the USA, Portugal, Canada, Spain, and Italy had one.

Matthew (GPI #29 / PoY #56) had an all-star run in the PokerGO Studio during the PGT PLO Series II, culminating in a series champion title. Starting with 9th place in Event #2, Matthew won Event #3 before finishing 4th and 11th in Event #4 and #5. Those were followed up by two more results, including a 3rd place effort in Event #6 and finally placing 7th in Event #9, which fell just shy of counting. His 1,136.73 points fell just short.

Diogo Coelho (GPI #144 / PoY #218) was close behind at 1,114.87 points after winning the Eureka High Roller at EPT Cyprus. Current GPI PoY and July’s GPI’s PoM Adrian Mateos (GPI #1 / PoY #1) finished in 4th, having returned to GPI #1 two weeks ago. Canada’s all-time money leader and former GPI #1 Daniel Negreanu (GPI #36 / PoY #24) won Event #6 at PGT PLO Series II to round out the top five.

The bottom half of the top 10 included Ren Lin (GPI #6 / PoY #11) who had five Top 10s worldwide, Biao Ding (GPI #30 / PoY #19) with a 2nd and 3rd place finish at EPT Cyprus, Simone Andrian (GPI #44 / PoY #85) after winning the WSOP Europe Main Event, Hugues Girard (GPI #544 / PoY #158) who won the WPT Prime Championship in Paris, and Sebastien Compte (GPI #2,253 / PoY #996) with a side event win at EPT Cyprus.

TOP 10 – OCTOBER 2024

*A player’s top 5 scores for the month are used to determine PoM rankings

For further information:

Anthony Charter
PR & Communications Manager
[email protected]

About GPI/THM

Global Poker Index® (GPI) is live tournament poker’s ranking authority, classifying over 650,000 active players from over 100 countries across over 35,000 festivals. The Hendon Mob Poker Database (THM) has archived over 600,000 live poker tournaments and 5 million individual results and is continually updated via real-time data collection from over 2,200 partner venues. Global Poker Index and The Hendon Mob are trading names of Mediarex Group, a global sports and entertainment organization founded in Malta in 2012. For more information, visit http://globalpokerindex.com/ and http://thehendonmob.com/