Christopher Michael Soyza is a professional Malaysian poker player. He lives in Kuala Lumpur. Formerly he worked at an investment bank. His desire for financial freedom has lead him to quit his job and spurred him taking the step to becoming a professional poker player. Soyza said –
“For me, deciding to switch to poker as a full time career was a risk, so it felt good to know it worked out fine and hopefully I won’t have to go back to working in an office.”
Soyza has been playing live poker tournaments since 2011. He also plays on the trusted online casino platform PokerStars under the nickname Soyza.
Soyza celebrated his first major success in January 2015 at the Aussie Millions Poker Championship in Melbourne. In that event, he outperformed 604 entries and secured a victory bonus of more than 135,000 Australian dollars. The following year, he won the same tournament again, where the prize money was around $150,000.
In May 2017, Soyza took second place at the Poker King Cup Main Event in Macau and received the equivalent of nearly $150,000.
During July 2017, he became successful for the first time at the World Series of Poker at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and participated in the Little One for One Drop, a tournament of the No Limit Hold’em poker.
September of 2017, Soyza won the Macau Poker Cup high roller with a prize money of around $260,000.
Next year in mid-April, he took down the main event of the Asia Pacific Poker Tour in Incheon, South Korea, and received approximately $150,000 as the main prize.
In June 2018, Soyza won a DeepStack Championship Poker Series tournament at the Venetian Resort Hotel in Las Vegas and secured a win prize pool of $ 600,000.
In late August 2018, he participated in the European Poker Tour in Barcelona. In that tournament, he achieved a total of six money placements and received prize money of around 380,000 euros.
At the end of October 2018, Soyza became third at a high roller event initiated by Leon Tsoukernik as part of the World Series of Poker Europe at King’s Resort in Rozvadov and cashed over 520,000 euros. Again at the beginning of December 2018, Soyza cashed in more than $500,000 from two Jeju Red Dragon events in Jeju-do.
During March of 2019, he won a tournament in the Triton Super High Roller Series and secured his career best prize money of more than $1.4 million. At 2019, Soyza secured fourth place at the Triton Series Main Event in London and received another big volume of nearly $1.3 million. Soyza has earned over seven million dollars from playing live poker tournaments.