Jason Koon Wins PGT Championship as PokerGO Reveals New Season

Written by: Jennifer Newell December 28, 2022 Affiliate Disclaimer

Please note that some links on tightpoker.com are affiliate links. We may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you click through our links and make a purchase from one of our partners.

The 2022 PokerGO Tour consisted of 175 tournaments. The regular season of 174 tournaments ran through the December 20th Aria High Roller in Las Vegas and culminated in the PGT Championship freeroll for the season’s top players. In all, those tournaments awarded $426,160,997 in prize money. That $426M was up…

The 2022 PokerGO Tour consisted of 175 tournaments. The regular season of 174 tournaments ran through the December 20^th Aria High Roller in Las Vegas and culminated in the PGT Championship freeroll for the season’s top players.

In all, those tournaments awarded $426,160,997 in prize money. That $426M was up more than 55% from the $274M awarded in the first season of the PokerGO Tour.

Per PokerGO, the average prize pool for a tournament on the PokerGO Tour increased 28.9% year over year to more than $2.4M. And the number of entries for the season increased 40% to nearly 25K.

With a break only for the holidays, high-stakes poker players can begin preparing for the first big events of the new year to start on January 11. The PokerGO Cup will kick things off and lead to a PGT Mixed Games series in early February.

And it will kick off in Las Vegas at the PokerGO Studio, just as the 2022 wrapped in the same spot.

Koon Kept Crushing

Jason Koon is known for crushing tournaments, especially those in the high-stakes world. He has the bracelets and trophies to show for it.

Most recently, he added a belt to his collection of awards collection by defeating Phil Hellmuth in High Stakes Duel. He did what one contender after another could not do, and he won $1.6M for it. It capped off a year of wins in the Poker Masters and Triton Poker Series, not to mention more than a dozen final tables.

Those kinds of results brought Koon and another 20 successful high-stakes players to the 2022 PGT Championship on December 21.

The 174 tournaments that led to the Championship took the top 21 players on the leaderboard and invited them to play in the season-ending freeroll tournament. PokerGO put up $500K for the winner.

The tournament played down to a final table of six on the first of two days. After Jeremy Ausmus departed in ninth place, Cary Katz and Seth Davies followed to end that day. And Jason Koon, who had led the way for much of the afternoon/evening, sat far above the rest of the pack with 1.8M chips. Every other player had fewer than 300K.

Jason Koon (@JasonKoon) holds a majority of the chips with six remaining heading into Day 2 of the PGT Championship.
Koon has nearly 57% of the chips in play which is nearly 5x as much as the current second place, @chadeveslage.
🔗 – Day 1 Recap: https://t.co/KKhaeyXvkV pic.twitter.com/ggCo2f7Stm
— PokerGO News (@PokerGOnews) December 22, 2022

The second day of play found Nick Petrangelo busting Chad Eveslage in sixth but Koon stepping in to eliminate Stephen Chidwick in fifth. Sean Winter sent Benny Glaser out in fourth and then Petrangelo in third, taking a two-to-one chip lead over Koon at that point. But Koon doubled through Winter and went on to win.

1^st place: Jason Koon (USA) $500,000

Koon also won the championship trophy and title of 2022 PGT champion.

Thanks to @PokerGO for putting on the PGT Championship. pic.twitter.com/rXSX0q9BHI
— Jason Koon (@JasonKoon) December 23, 2022

And that win put Koon at more than $42.3M in lifetime live tournament earnings, fifth place behind only Stephen Chidwick, Daniel Negreanu, Bryn Kenney, and Justin Bonomo.

2022 PGT Leaderboard

The PokerGO Tour leaderboard tracks players throughout the season. Though Koon won the PGT Championship for which the top 21 leaderboard scorers earned entries, said leaderboard still shows who scored the most points throughout the year.

1^st place: Stephen Chidwick (3,412 points) $6,314,084 PGT earnings (32 cashes, 6 wins)
2^nd place: Phil Ivey (3,083 points) $5,944,394 PGT earnings (17 cashes, 3 wins)
3^rd place: Jason Koon (2,833 points) $6,731,848 PGT earnings (18 cashes, 3 wins)
4^th place: Michael Duek (2,400 points) $5,063,505 PGT earnings (6 cashes, 1 win)
5^th place: Sean Winter (2,368 points) $3,599,071 PGT earnings (20 cashes, 3 wins)

Note that earnings don’t necessarily correspond with points, as the amount of the buy-in and prize pools determine the scoring system.

Ready for 2023 PGT

The PokerGO Tour won’t take a very long holiday break. Before the PGT Championship even finished, the PokerGO team had already announced the first quarter of tournaments for 2023.

It will all start at the PokerGO Studio with the third running of the PokerGO Cup, followed by a new series to highlight mixed game players and another new series focused on Pot Limit Omaha.

January 11-20: PokerGO Cup = 8 NLHE tournaments, $10K-$50K buy-ins
February 4-11: PGT Mixed Games = 8 tournaments, $5K-$25K buy-ins
March 11-19: PGT PLO = 8 tournaments, $2K-$25K buy-ins (details forthcoming)

The schedule seems light at first glance, primarily because it is missing things like Aria, Venetian, and Wynn High Roller tournaments and international series like Triton and European Poker Tour. These will join the schedule as they are confirmed as a part of the PGT.

PokerGO President Mori Eskandani called the new season a “go big or go home” effort. “We are confident that we have put together an incredible offering of events that will allow the PGT to grow even more,” he said.

First quarter events of the 2023 PGT schedule are here!
The PokerGO Cup kicks off in January and is followed up by the brand-new PGT Mixed Games festival in February, and the PGT PLO Series in March. https://t.co/jnF6NHEfAf
— PokerGO News (@PokerGOnews) December 21, 2022

As in the past, fans can watch livestreams of most final tables of the PGT via a PokerGO subscription.