Isaac Haxton Becomes First Player To Win $5,000,000 In 2023

Isaac Haxton is the first poker player to win $5,000,000 from live poker tournaments in 2023. Haxton eclipsed that mark when he won Event #8: $25,000 NL Hold'em for $423,000 at the 2023 U.S. Poker Open on Saturday, April 1. According to TheHendonMob.com, the win pushed Haxton to $5,154,740 on the year.

The win also gave Haxton 259 points for the PGT leaderboard, moving him up to fourth place on the season. He has two PGT wins and three PGT cashes in 2023. In January, Haxton won the final event of the PokerGO Cup for $598,000. 

In 2023, Haxton has 12 live tournament cashes. Four of those cashes have resulted in victories. Eight of those cashes have been for six figures, and two have been for seven figures. He achieved all of this in the first 91 days of the year.

Isaac Haxton’s Road To $5,000,000

In addition to moving past $5,000,000 in live tournament winnings in 2023, Haxton's victory in Event #8 at the U.S. Poker Open moved him to more than $35,000,000 in career live tournament earnings, again according to TheHendonMob.com. He becomes the 15th player in poker history to hit that mark.

Haxton is on pace to have his best year ever on the live tournament felt and is a little over $3,000,000 short of surpassing the $8,194,991 he won in 2018. That's the year that Haxton won Super High Roller Bowl V for $3,672,000.

With Haxton moving past $5,000,000 in winnings so early in the year and with so much poker still available across 2023, it's time to start asking if we'll see Haxton produce one of the absolute best years ever. The 2023 World Series of Poker is still on the schedule and the WSOP includes so many high buy-in tournaments. There will be plenty of action on the PGT that will offer hefty prizes. Poker Masters is coming in the second half of 2023, and, of course, Super High Roller Bowl usually happens in the second half of the year now. Haxton has enjoyed a lot of success in Triton Poker Super High Roller Series events in 2023, and there are still more of those series available for him to chase six- and seven-figure paydays.

In order for Haxton to have one of the best top-five years ever, he'll need to eclipse $19,078,807 in live tournament winnings. That's the fifth-best year ever as recorded by Antonio Esfandiari in 2012. The best year ever for a player on the live circuit came in 2019 when Bryn Kenney won $30,321,412. It's hard to fathom a poker player can win that much money from live tournaments, but there's just so much on offer on the high-roller scene these days that it's not out of the question to see Haxton, or someone else, produce a top-five best year ever.

Top Five Best Years On the Live Tournament Circuit

It'll be extra difficult for Haxton to move onto that list above simply due to the fact that each of those years included a $1,000,000-or-greater buy-in that all five of those players finished first or second in. Those scores really bloated the live tournament results for Bryn Kenney, Justin Bonomo, Daniel Colman, Aaron Zang, and Antonio Esfandiari in those given years.

That said, don't rule out a year for Haxton similar to what we saw from Fedor Holz in 2016 when he banked $16,093,400 in live tournament winnings. In 2016, Holz landed huge Super High Roller Bowl, Triton Poker Series, WSOP, and European Poker Tour scores. All of those are on the table for Haxton to achieve in 2023 and some of the biggest events of the year are still to come.

All of the success could also lead Haxton to finish the 2023 PGT season in the top 40 of the PGT leaderboard. That will qualify him for the season-ending PGT Championship and allow him to compete for the event's $1,000,000 freeroll prize pool that will include a $500,000 first-place prize.

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