Winfred Yu

Winfred Yu has $14,116,378 in recorded live tournament earnings from 106 cashes, read on 6 November 2026 — third on Hong Kong's all-time money list and 122nd 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.

The gap in this page is now closed

For five weeks this page carried an honest hole. His recorded total had jumped from about $12.34 million to $14.1 million over September 2026 — close to $1.8 million — and we could not attribute it to a named event, because the total came from the country money list while his individual results had last been read on 13 September. We printed the gap rather than guess at it.

Re-reading his profile on 6 November 2026 answers it. On 12 September 2026 he finished sixth in the $200,000 + 10,000 No Limit Hold'em Triton Invitational, Event #10 of the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Jeju II in Jeju, South Korea, for **$1,693,000**. That is comfortably the largest cash of his career and it replaces the London Triton Million result at the top of his record. He also took $79,000 for eighth in the $30,000 Triton Turbo at the same festival the day before.

Two smaller corrections came with it. His cash count is 106, not 104, and his all-time money list position is 122nd, not 146th — the Jeju result moved him up twenty-four places. His profile prints the total as $14,116,378, one dollar below the $14,116,379 on the Hong Kong country list; we use the profile figure and note the discrepancy rather than smoothing it away.

A career that only recently found its defining score

Until September 2026 his biggest recorded cash was $1,339,193 for a tournament he did not win — 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.

Even now the total is spread thinly by the standards of the top of this list: $14.1 million across 106 cashes, with only one 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 four 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.

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, Jeju — the venues on his record are the answer to where Hong Kong plays.