Following the news that the WSOP POY will be based on a player’s best 10 results (only one online), Barry Carter gives his views on the good and the bad of it.
At the very last moment before the start of the 2024 World Series of Poker, a revamped Player of the Year scoring system was introduced.
The new system goes on a ‘best 10 results count’ system, rather than a volume system. Only one online bracelet can be counted towards the final result. There is also a minimum of five cashes needed.
I personally predicted that there would be a requirement that the winner at least won one bracelet, with double bracelet winners getting a boost. This, however, didn’t surprise me either.
2024 PLAYER OF THE YEAR🚨
The (new) rules are simple:
– 10 Cashes Maximum.
– 5 Cashes Minimum.
– Best Online Bracelet Cash Counts.Happy hunting! https://t.co/LbVFj2qBlJ pic.twitter.com/0c6H64eUq2
— WSOP – World Series of Poker (@WSOP) May 26, 2024
Open to more people
The positives about this new system is that it opens it up to more players, in particular non-Americans. A European grinder who arrives mid-June could feasibly win now if they went on a sun-run.
This also rewards success in big field No Limit events more, given the smaller number of events criteria. One big field win will count for much more when there are only nine other scorable events. I agree with this, most poker is No Limit and overcoming a big field is much harder, in my opinion, than winning a mixed game event.
On the negative though, I think this means variance will play an even bigger role in the Player of the Year scoring. Obviously, it always did, but now a deep result in the Main Event or Millionaire Maker is going to play a much greater role than it did before.
Why the sudden change?
Call me a sadist, but I prefer the system of the biggest grinder winning. Leaderboards are hard, and especially hard to maintain. I know from my own embarrassingly modest success in online leaderboards (Two wins and a third in some low-stakes leaderboards). I was exhausted after them and played terribly at the end – I can’t even imagine how tough they are for live poker, for two months, against elite players.
I personally believe the only reason the scoring system changed is because Ian Matakis won last year. Matakis was an unknown who put in a legendary grind live and online to win it, but I feel the Las Vegas alumni kicked up such a fuss that ‘one of their own’ didn’t win it that we saw the rule change. We didn’t even see such a radical rule change when Chris Ferguson won, and he was a persona non grata in poker circles at the time.
If Hellmuth or Negreanu won last year, the points system would not have changed and online bracelets would still count. I think there is a missed opportunity not to have embraced the Matakis win and marketed him as a Moneymaker 2.0, showing anyone can win on their day.
Having said that, this new system opens up the leaderboard to so many more people, so I like the change and think it will make the leaderboard race more interesting (and hope it doesn’t get changed next year when ‘unknown Euro’ wins it on their two week holiday this summer).
Do you agree with the new system? Let us know in the comments: