WSOP Player of the Year Update
Action has started extremely slowly here at King's Casino. Only a handful of tables are even dealing as the 120-odd players who are registered for Day 1b are spread between a multitude of tables as more entries slowly trickle in.
While there's little to watch early from a poker sense, we thought we'd take a look at the World Series of Poker Player of the Year standings heading into the very last points event f the year. It was a hot topic heading into WSOP Europe, with the much-maligned Chris Ferguson leading the way after a strong WSOP that saw him rack up a highly impressive 17 cashes, including two final tables that both saw him place top-four in $10,000 Championship events.
Of course, Ferguson only solidified his standing here at King's. He tacked on six more cashes, the most recent of which resulted in his sixth bracelet win, coming in the $1,500 PLO8 event.
While Ferguson has showed up and showed out, making headlines along the way, he isn't out of the woods just yet.
John Racener, Ryan Hughes, Mike Leah and Alex Foxen are four of the next five players in the standings. All four made the journey here to Rozvadov. While the latter two appear to be too far behind to make up necessary ground, Racener and Hughes appear to be drawing live still.
Currently, Racener is 136 points back of Ferguson. Hughes has more ground to make up at 184 points.
Using the handy calculator the WSOP has provided to make a rough guess of Player of the Year points, it looks like a min-cash here in the Main Event will be worth approximately 50 points. Since the winner here is guaranteed €1 million, we can have a good idea that first place will award about 230 points.
Given that, even a min-cash for Ferguson here would likely cement him the banner. Hughes would surely need a final table run and likely a brick from Ferguson. Racener has a little more room to make his pass, but he needs a very strong result as well, especially if Ferguson were to cash.
One ultra-long shot: Kenny Hallaert. He made the final table of the High Roller for One Drop here in Rozvadov, albeit with just a handful of big blinds. If he were to somehow win that, and then win the Main Event, and Ferguson were to miss cashing here in the Main, Hallaert would appear likely to move past the six-time bracelet winner. Check with your bookie to see what odds you can get on that parlay. For fun only of course — we at PokerNews do not endorse unregulated gambling.
Here's a look at the top 10 standings:
| Place | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chris Ferguson | 1,178.53 |
| 2 | John Racener | 1,042.04 |
| 3 | Ryan Hughes | 994.32 |
| 4 | John Monnette | 865.21 |
| 5 | Mike Leah | 849.16 |
| 6 | Alex Foxen | 833.45 |
| 7 | Dario Sammartino | 775.89 |
| 8 | Ray Henson | 768.49 |
| 9 | Ben Yu | 766.49 |
| 10 | Kenny Hallaert | 742.38 |
And here's a look at the history of the WSOP POY honors:
| Year | Winner | Bracelets Won | Final Tables |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Daniel Negreanu | 1 | 5 |
| 2005 | Allen Cunningham | 1 | 4 |
| 2006 | Jeff Madsen | 2 | 4 |
| 2007 | Tom Schneider | 2 | 3 |
| 2008 | Erick Lindgren | 1 | 3 |
| 2009 | Jeff Lisandro | 3 | 4 |
| 2010 | Frank Kassela | 2 | 3 |
| 2011 | Ben Lamb | 1 | 4 |
| 2012 | Greg Merson | 2 | 2 |
| 2013 | Daniel Negreanu | 2 | 4 |
| 2014 | George Danzer | 3 | 5 |
| 2015 | Mike Gorodinsky | 1 | 3 |
| 2016 | Jason Mercier | 2 | 4 |