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.

Poker
Scott Seiver has a narrow lead

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:

RankNamePts
1Scott Seiver2,736.69
2Chris Hunichen2,655.92
3Jeremy Ausmus2,457.58
4John Racener2,313.01
5Yuri Dzivielevski2,178.64
6Phil Ivey2,152.36
7Shaun Deeb2,146.88
8David Prociak1,952.21
9Robert Mizrachi1,903.94
10Patrick Moulder1,899.83
11Nick Schulman1,890.12
12Maksim Pisarenko1,857.93
13Daniel Sepiol1,803.86
14Viktor Blom1,800.04
15Joao Simao Peres1,748.83
16Chance Kornuth1,739.07
17Joseph Couden1,725.18
18Bryce Yockey1,714.83
19Ilija Savevski1,712.93
20Sean Troha1,700.78
21Santhosh Suvarna1,694.00
22Phillip Hui1,638.37

Who will win it? Let us know in the comments: