Bryn Kenney is the Biggest Live Tournament Earner in 2017

Bryn Kenney, the 31-year-old pro from Long Beach, New York cashed 28 times in live tournaments last year for a total of $8.5 million, for more than what anyone else earned.

Bryn Kenney must have had a feeling 2017 was going to be a great year for him after the PokerStars Championship Bahamas series ended - he cashed 6 times there, winning two events. At the Bahamas, he added $1.77 million to his lifetime tournament earnings which stood at $11.9 million at the start of last year.

He continued to run hot throughout February and the spring months, scoring his biggest cash of his entire career in April - he won just under $1.95 million after besting the field in the €100K Super High Roller at the Monte Carlo PokerStars Championships.

Kenney went through a bit of a dry spell during the summer. Not only did he not manage to add another one to his only WSOP bracelet that he won in 2014, but he didn’t even cash once in the World Series last year despite playing multiple events, including the Main Event and the $50K Players Championship mixed game tournament. 

His drought ended on August 15th, when he came in second in the $10K NLHE event at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open. Kenney also added some impressive results to his tally later in the year, including a victory in Event #3 at the inaugural Poker Masters high roller series, a 2nd place finish in the €25K PokerStars Championship NLHE event in Barcelona, and a 3rd place finish in the WSOP Europe €25K Super High Roller in Rozvadov.

With this successful year of his, Kenney pumped his total career live tournament winnings up to an impressive $20.4 million.

Bryn Kenney is followed by this year’s Main Event champion, Scott Blumstein on Hendon’s annual earners’ list. The accountant from New Jersey pocketed $8.174 million in poker prize money, the vast majority of which - $8.15 million to be exact - comes from his ME victory in the Rio in July. The German Christoph Vogelsang is third on the list - his biggest payday was his first-place finish in the Aria Super High Roller Bowl in May that earned him $6 million. 

Please note that this list only takes into account the money earned in live tournaments - online results and live cash game results are not counted. Also, these numbers only show how much a player got paid in prize money, they do not tell whether somebody is in profit or not. For example, we recently learned that although Daniel Negreanu cashed for a total of $2,792,104 last year, he also paid $2,874,164 for tournament buy-ins, which means he ended the past year with $86,140 loss in the live tournament circuit: in this list, however, only his $2.8 million payouts are taken into consideration.

Hendon’s Top 10 Tournament Earners’ List for 2017: