Ontario's Top Female Poker Players

By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · April 1, 2026

Fact-checked by Maya Chen

Ontario has produced some of the strongest female poker players in the world. Four women with Ontario roots have reached the top of the game, from winning WSOP bracelets to making history at the Triton series. Here's a look at the players defining women's poker from Canada's largest regulated market.

Kristen Foxen

Kristen Foxen, born December 29, 1986 in St. Catharines, Ontario, holds more WSOP bracelets than any other female player from Canada. She picked up poker as a college freshman, spent years sharpening her game online, and turned that foundation into a career that now spans over $5 million in live tournament earnings.

She has five WSOP bracelets in total: two live wins in 2013 and 2016, both in the Ladies Championship, and three online bracelets in 2020, 2023, and 2024. In 2025 she passed Vanessa Selbst to reach number one on the women's all-time live tournament earnings list. The GPI named her Female Player of the Year multiple times, including each year from 2018 to 2020.

Her biggest live cash came at the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series Jeju in early 2026, where she finished 3rd in the $125,000 No-Limit Hold'em event for $1,104,000. She also reached the final table of the $100K Main Event at the same stop, finishing 4th for $1,449,000. The two results together show a player who is no longer an outlier at the highest-stakes tables but a consistent presence.

Foxen built her edge through online volume before the live high-roller circuit existed in its current form. That background shows in her post-flop precision and her willingness to make technically correct folds in high-pressure spots. She is married to Alex Foxen, also a top-ranked tournament professional.

Xuan Liu

Xuan Liu was born in Tianjin, China, and moved to Toronto at age five. Toronto is home. She studied at the University of Waterloo, one of the schools that has quietly produced a disproportionate number of strong Ontario poker players over the years.

In May 2025, Liu became the first woman ever to win a Triton Poker title. She took down the $25,000 WPT Global Slam at Triton Montenegro for $860,000, a result that landed in headlines across the poker world. It was a long time coming. Her results had shown the level for years: she finished 3rd in the 2011 EPT Main Event for €360,000, and she spent a stretch as an ambassador for WPT Global, 888poker, and Natural8.

She started playing at charity casinos in Toronto and moved online early in her career, building her game on PartyPoker before making the transition to major live events. Her career live earnings now exceed $2 million.

The Triton Montenegro win sits in a category of its own. Triton events draw the best no-limit hold'em players in the world to $25,000-minimum buy-ins, and no woman had won one before Liu did. The record stands.

Evelyn Ng

Evelyn Ng was born September 14, 1975 in Toronto, and grew up in the city. She started playing poker at 17, learning the game in Toronto card rooms and finding a mentor in Daniel Negreanu, who was making his own name in the same scene at the time.

Ng was one of the first Canadian women to compete at the highest levels of the live poker circuit and to be taken seriously doing it. Her best-known result came at the WPT Ladies' Night I in 2003, where she finished 2nd, outlasting Annie Duke and Jennifer Harman in the same field. That result, against two of the most recognized female players of that era, gave a clear indication of where her game stood.

She cashed for $73,230 at the $25,500 WPT Championship No-Limit Hold'em event in 2006, one of the few women to enter and cash in a WPT main event at that buy-in level that year. Her career live earnings exceed $375,000, and she appeared regularly on poker television broadcasts during the boom years of the mid-2000s. For a generation of Ontario players who came up watching poker on TV, Ng was the familiar face from home.

Thi Hoa Nguyen

Thi Hoa Nguyen is from Toronto. She arrived on the tournament scene in 2014 at the Fallsview Poker Classic in Niagara Falls, Ontario, finishing 8th for $32,496. For a first major cash, a top-ten finish at Fallsview is a meaningful result: the Classic draws a solid field and the competition is real.

2014 was a strong year for her across the board. She won the CPT Ladies National Championship in Calgary that same year, and her biggest single score came at the Deepstack Extravaganza in Las Vegas: $120,561. Three significant results in one calendar year is not a coincidence. It reflects consistent preparation and execution.

Her career earnings are approximately $300,000. She has been a public advocate for female representation in poker, a role that carries more weight than any single result. Getting more women into rooms where they're still outnumbered is a longer project than winning a tournament, and Nguyen has taken that seriously.

Why Ontario Matters for Women's Poker

Ontario's regulated online poker market launched on April 4, 2022. It's Canada's largest by player pool and by the number of licensed operators. Six poker rooms currently hold licences from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and operate under the iGaming Ontario framework, a stand-alone Crown agency that oversees the regulated market. Those rooms include GGPoker and PokerStars, among others. All are available to players who are 19 or older and physically located in Ontario.

GGPoker runs WSOP Super Circuit Ontario events through its platform, which gives Ontario players a direct path to bracelet-level competition without leaving the province. That kind of access didn't exist here five years ago. The regulated structure means players can deposit, withdraw, and compete in a licensed environment, and the operator pool is large enough that there's always a game running. If you want to see where the next generation of Ontario female players develops, the online rooms are part of that answer. Check our best poker sites in Ontario guide for a full breakdown.

On the live side, Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls is the anchor. Fallsview hosts WPT stops, the Fallsview Poker Classic, and other major series throughout the year, making it Ontario's primary destination for tournament play. It's where Thi Hoa Nguyen made her tournament debut, and it remains the biggest live poker room in the province. The Ontario tournament schedule lists upcoming events at Fallsview and elsewhere across the province.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Articles