It's very close in the WSOP Player of the Year race

Right now at least 20 players could win it with one result and the $50,000 Players Championship could be pivotal.

The new scoring system in the World Series of Poker has opened the race up to more players, and right now a Murderer’s Row of elite professionals are in contention.

As we mentioned earlier this month, 3,166 points would have won this leaderboard last year, if it had the new scoring system. Nobody has reached that yet, but lots of players are a single event away from beating that number.

Scott Seiver maintains his lead with 2,736 points but Chris Hunichen, Jeremy Ausmus, John Racener, Yuri Dzivielvski, Phil Ivey and Shaun Deeb all have well over 2,000 points.

My prediction is that the $50,000 Players Championship, which is taking place right now, might decide it. The winner of that will get 1,198 points and Ivey, Ausmus, Viktor Blom, Bryce Yockey and Phillip Hui are all still in contention, all of whom are in the Top 20 of the POY.

Either way, it is undeniable that the new scoring system has made the POY more interesting. It’s debatable whether it’s the best way to judge the player of the year, but it has taken a very niche leaderboard and made it a lot more open.

This is what the top 20 looks like at the time of writing:

Rank	Name	Pts
1	Scott Seiver	2,736.69
2	Chris Hunichen	2,655.92
3	Jeremy Ausmus	2,457.58
4	John Racener	2,313.01
5	Yuri Dzivielevski	2,178.64
6	Phil Ivey	2,152.36
7	Shaun Deeb	2,146.88
8	David Prociak	1,952.21
9	Robert Mizrachi	1,903.94
10	Patrick Moulder	1,899.83
11	Nick Schulman	1,890.12
12	Maksim Pisarenko	1,857.93
13	Daniel Sepiol	1,803.86
14	Viktor Blom	1,800.04
15	Joao Simao Peres	1,748.83
16	Chance Kornuth	1,739.07
17	Joseph Couden	1,725.18
18	Bryce Yockey	1,714.83
19	Ilija Savevski	1,712.93
20	Sean Troha	1,700.78
21	Santhosh Suvarna	1,694.00
22	Phillip Hui	1,638.37