The 2023 WSOP Player of the Year race took a new twist in the past three days as Ian Matakis reassumed the lead, Chris Brewer jumped to the #2 spot on the strength of his second bracelet of the series, and the correction of a database error bumped Portugal's Michael Santos moved up to fourth, right behind defending POY champion Shaun Deeb.
A few days ago, Matakis, of Faribault, Minnesota, sat just 20 points behind Deeb in what had been a see-saw battle between the two. Matakis, though picked up two nice cashes of late, a seventh-place finish in Event #65: $5,000 6-Handed No-Limit Hold’em and a ninth-place finish in Event #71: $50,000 HIGH ROLLER Pot-Limit Omaha. The two big showings, which combined brought Matakis more than $300,000 in winnings in his breakout year, were worth more than 600 POY points in total. The surge pushed Matakis's POY tally to 4,041.33.
That's more than 400 points clear of the new runner-up in the chase, Chris Brewer, who picked up his second bracelet of the series three days ago in the $10,000 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Lowball Championship. As of the end of Fourth of July results, Brewer (pictured above) has 3,600.53 POY points, moving ahead of Deeb's 3,407.68, which holds third.
One of the most interesting nuggets of this year's POY race involves Portugal's Santos. As often happens with international players, players who have Caesars Rewards accounts under two or more name variations, and other circumstances. Santos was discovered to have had a couple of his 2023 WSOP results entered under a second account about a week ago. The database account correction, in which Santos's two accounts and results were merged, moved him from about 10th in the standings to fourth as of the overnight updates. Santos is now credited with 3,340.63 POY points.
