Winfred Yu

Winfred Yu has $14,116,379 in recorded live tournament earnings from 104 cashes, read on 2 October 2026 — third on Hong Kong's all-time money list and 146th in the world. He is also the player on this list whose influence most exceeds his earnings: short deck hold'em, now a fixture of every super-high-roller schedule in the world, came out of the Asian high-stakes scene he helped build, and he is one of the driving forces behind the Triton Super High Roller Series.

A career with no single defining score

Yu's biggest recorded cash is $1,339,193, and he did not win the tournament — it was 11th place in the £1,050,000 Triton Million for Charity in London on 1 August 2019, still the largest buy-in tournament ever staged. Eleventh in that field was worth more than most players' best win.

His total is spread thinly by the standards of the top of this list: $14.1 million across 104 cashes, with no result above $1.4 million. Compare Elton Tsang, second in Hong Kong, whose single best cash of $12,248,912 is close to Yu's entire career. Two very different careers, both at the top of the same small territory's list.

Short deck is the thread

Two of his three headline results are short deck events, and that is not coincidence.

On 17 May 2018 he finished fourth in the HK$1,000,000 Short Deck Ante Only event at Triton Super High Roller Series Montenegro for $1,172,727. On 6 April 2022 he won the $75,000 Short Deck at the Triton Poker Cyprus Special Edition for $1,010,000 — his only recorded seven-figure first place.

Short deck — hold'em with the deuces through fives stripped out, usually played ante-only — was a Macau and Hong Kong cash-game format before it was a tournament format anywhere else. Its arrival on the international circuit came through exactly the players and the tour Yu is associated with. For a territory that licenses no poker at all, exporting a variant of the game to every high-roller festival in the world is an odd and rather good distinction.

The figure moved sharply, and we are saying so

Over September 2026 his recorded total rose from $12.34 million to $14,116,379 on the Hong Kong money list — a jump of close to $1.8 million. A move that size means a major cash we have not yet attributed to a named event, because we have not re-read his profile page since 13 September.

We would rather print that gap than paper over it. The $14,116,379 and the country rank come from the Hong Kong all-time money list read on 2 October 2026; the cash count, global rank and the three results below come from his profile page read on 13 September 2026, and the sources are listed separately for that reason. When the profile is next read, the missing result will be added here.

Reading the number

Live tournament results only: no online play, no cash games, and no adjustment for staking or swaps, which at Triton buy-ins are routine. For a player whose reputation rests substantially on high-stakes cash games, the recorded tournament figure is a particularly incomplete measure of the career — it is simply the part that gets published.

And none of it was won at home, for the reason set out on our Hong Kong page: the territory has no casino and no licensed poker room. London, Budva, Kyrenia — the venues on his record are the answer to where Hong Kong plays.