The World Series of Poker has announced changes in the way its annual Player of the Year honor will be awarded for this summer's series, which gets underway today in Las Vegas. While the rules for determining each year's POY honoree are frequently tweaked from year to year, the modifications made for this series are the most significant changes introduced in recent years.
The POY changes for 2024 are best characterized as a choice of quantity over quality. The WSOP has been besieged for years with complaints from players that min-cashes and other barely-in-the-money finishes are rewarded too strongly compared to what an event's ultimate winner receives, particularly with the increase in unlimited-reentry tourneys.
Another contributing factor is the growth, event-wise, in the WSOP itself. The 2024 WSOP schedule includes 99 live bracelet events, plus another 30 bracelets online for the new Nevada-New Jersey-Michigan pooled market. As the series has grown, so has the record for the most cashes in a single series. In 2023, when Ian Matakis won the POY honor, Mike Holtz set the new cashes mark at 25.
Though Holtz didn't win the POY, other players have ridden a string of min-cashes to a POY honor, and the odds were that someone would do so again in the near future. Chris Ferguson famously captured the 2017 POY honor by max-late-regging events during that summer's WSOP, while also logging a couple of deep runs that put him in contention for the honor, which that year also included that fall's WSOP Europe series. When Ferguson claimed a bracelet in Europe, that gave him enough points for the 2017 POY title.
Ian Matakis was the 2023 WSOP Player of the YearNew 10-event cap on qualifying finsihes
Min-cashes have been deemphasized under the 2024 changes, since only a player's top 10 finishes, POY points-wise, will count toward the honor. It's possible a few top contenders will flesh out their POY point totals with one or two cashes, but the big finishes will rule the race more than ever in recent memory. There's also a five-cash minimum, but that's largely an illusion; there's no reasonable likelihood that a player cashing four or fewer times will garner enough points to win the POY race.
As noted in the WSOP's announcement post on social media, a player's best online showing during the series can be included. But as explained more fully on this year's POY landing page, only one online result can be included in a player's overall POY tally. A player does not have to have any online results that qualify, as all results that count can come from live events.
The shift in emphasis toward wins and final-table finishes is likely several years overdue, but it usually takes some time for such sea changes to occur. Another controversial aspect of the POY race that remains unaddressed is the extent to which players who fire numerous bullets in multiple events are perhaps even more able in 2024, in comparative terms, to achieve multiple finishes that award high POY points. Some players have advocated for a per-bullet deduction in percentage terms to the POY points generated through top finishes.
As has long been the case, a handful of events will be excluded from POY counts. For 2024, that's six events:
- Event #2: $500 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em
- Event #46: $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold’em
- Event #59: $1,000 Super Seniors No-Limit Hold’em
- Event #65: $5,000 Seniors High Rollers No-Limit Hold’em
- Event #71: $1,000/$10,000 Ladies Event
- Event #75: $1,000 Tag Team No-Limit Hold’em
Phil Hellmuth looking to capitalize
Phil Hellmuth will be a happy man. He told PokerOrg back in February that he had heard rumors of these changes.
“I'm hearing rumors they're changing the WSOP Player of the Year requirements to ten tournaments; your best ten results," Hellmuth said. "This change is great for poker.
"Why? Because when you have unlimited results, someone like Shaun Deeb can literally play 85 out of 99 tournaments. And all those cashes add up, but those min-cashes are completely worthless.
"What happens then is it becomes the world series of stamina. And you shouldn't award Player of the Year based on stamina. It's not fair. Most people can't win it that way. So that was a really big flaw they had in the system. That is great for poker if they've changed it to the top 10 results.
"And I am hearing rumors from high up that this is the case.”
The POY page will include a leaderboard that is updated daily, typically overnight in the 3:00 am to 4:00 am range. The updates include almost all cashes recorded through the prior day's play.
Additional image courtesy of WPT
