money list
Ninety million, minus nothing.
The all time money list adds up what players collected from tournaments and subtracts nothing they paid to be there. That single omission is the whole story of the list, and it is the reason a career total is not a bank balance, not profit, and not a ranking of who plays best.
sources checked 30 August 2026
the arithmetic it does not do
A losing year can move you up the list.
Take a player who enters twelve and a half million dollars worth of tournaments in a year and cashes for twelve million. The list adds twelve million to their career total. Their actual year was half a million down. Nothing about that is a scandal or a trick, it is simply what the list was built to record: money collected, not money kept.
Three things are invisible in every figure you will read. Buy-ins are not subtracted. Staking is not shown, so a result recorded against one name may have been funded by a dozen people who took most of it. And cash games do not appear at all, which means some of the largest amounts ever won at poker are on no list anywhere. If any of those terms are new, the glossary covers the vocabulary, and bankroll is the one to start with, because it is the concept the money list quietly ignores.
There is one more distortion, and it is the reason the top of the list looks the way it does. Almost everyone up there plays the largest buy-ins in the world, where a single result can be worth more than a decade of ordinary tournaments. The list is therefore a ranking of who has had the most money in play, at least as much as a ranking of who plays best. A very strong player who spends their career in tournaments a normal person can afford will never appear on it.
snapshot, top five
These five figures were read on 30 August 2026 on the all time money list published by PokerNews, which states that it takes its results from The Hendon Mob. That page carries no date of its own, so treat 30 August 2026 as the day we saw it and nothing more. The order near the top changes several times a year.
| # | Player | Recorded cashes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bryn Kenney | $90,761,210 |
| 2 | Stephen Chidwick | $79,029,052 |
| 3 | Jason Koon | $77,032,156 |
| 4 | Mikita Badziakouski | $68,780,521 |
| 5 | Adrian Mateos | $67,813,883 |
For the current standings, and for country lists including the Netherlands, see the all time money list at The Hendon Mob. Amounts we could not confirm at a source are not printed on this page.
what it means for you
Your own number is smaller and more useful.
Nothing on a career money list transfers to your game. The buy-ins are not yours, the fields are not yours, and the totals are gross. The number that does tell you something is your own result per hundred hands, or per tournament entered, over a sample large enough that variance has stopped shouting over it. That is a much smaller number and a far better one.
The practical version is not glamorous. Work out what you can afford to have in play, which is what a bankroll calculation is for, and then judge yourself over months rather than sessions. If money that stays rather than money that passes through is the thing you care about, that is also where the money and law section starts, including the parts a money list never mentions.
next
Every figure on that list came out of one format.
Multi table tournaments produce nearly all of it: huge fields, a prize pool that pays a small fraction of entrants, and a stack that only drifts down. Understanding that format explains both the totals and why they say so little.
questions about the money list
What is the all time poker money list?
A ranking of players by the total of their recorded tournament cashes over their whole career. The best known version is kept by The Hendon Mob, and other sites reproduce it. It is a sum of money collected, not a measure of profit and not a ranking of ability.
Does the money list show profit?
No, and this is the point most readers miss. It adds up what a player collected and subtracts nothing. Buy-ins are not deducted, and neither are travel, entry fees for tournaments that did not pay, or tax. A player who paid more in entries over a year than they cashed for still moves up the list that year.
What about staking?
A result is recorded against the player who was sitting in the seat, whoever paid for it. Selling a share of your action to backers is normal at high buy-ins, so a listed amount can be a fraction of what the player kept. None of that is visible in the number, and there is no practical way to make it visible.
Why are the same few players at the top?
Because the top of the list is made of people who play the largest buy-ins. One result in a tournament with a six figure entry fee can outweigh a decade of ordinary tournaments. The list therefore ranks exposure to big fields and big buy-ins at least as much as it ranks skill.
Does the money list include cash games?
No. Only recorded tournament results appear on it. Private and casino cash games are not published anywhere, and some of the largest sums won and lost in poker have never been on any list.
How often does the money list change?
Continuously. Every festival moves it, and the order near the top changes several times a year. That is why this page carries a date next to its figures and links to the source rather than pretending to be current.