Today, we're going to start our article with the new points system for the Player of the Year award, where Scott Seiver is currently in first place. He has secured this top spot by winning two bracelets, but there are still many tournaments to come so nothing is clear yet.

Sergio Aido wins his first bracelet, Scott Seiver wins his sixth

Scoring system changed

If you recall, last year a complete unknown Ian Matakis won Player of the Year, and apparently that was behind the scoring change. The WSOP announced at the start of the current festival that the following factors will be taken into account in the new system:

• A player must have at least 5 ITM placements
• No more than the top 10 ITM finishes will count towards the scoring
• Only the top one cashout from an online tournament will count

With this new scoring system, Scott Seiver is currently at the top of the leaderboard with 2,566.73 points at the time of writing. In second place is Nick Schulman with 1,890.12 points and third place is rounded out by the legendary Phil Ivey with 1,755.26 points.

If the new scoring system had been in place last year, Chris Brewer would have clearly won it, thanks to his wins in the 10k 2-7 Single Draw Championship and the 250k Super High Roller event. This would have earned him a total of 3,166 points. This suggests to us that the new scoring system favors small player field tournaments with high buy-ins.

A controversial situation from 2019

Do you remember 2019 and the WSOP Player of the Year results? If not we'll remind you. Daniel Negreanu was announced as the winner, but his championship was short-lived, and it was the fault of journalist and statistician Alex Elenskiy, who pointed out that there was a flaw in the scoring.

In fact, Daniel Negreanu's cashout from the $1,000 NLH online tournament appeared in the results, giving him an extra 213.1 points. However, Daniel did not cash in that tournament. After the error was pointed out, the points had to be recalculated and the winner was Robert Campbell with 3,961.31 points. Second place went to Shaun Deeb with 3,917.32 points and Daniel Negreanu finished third with 3,861.78 points.

Did you know that Phil Hellmuth won 17 gold bracelets, but never became the Player of the Year? However, besides the number of gold bracelets, he also holds another first place in the number of second place Player of the Year awards. Phil has been runner-up no less than four times, in 2006, 2011, 2012 and 2021.

In the entire history of the WSOP, only one player has managed to win both the Main Event and the Player of the Year title in the same year. That player is Greg Merson, who took home $8,531,853 from the 2012 Main Event, leaving Daniel Negreanu in second place in the Player of the Year standings.

Martin Kabrhel has a chance to win a third bracelet

The $1,500 buy-in Monster Stack NLH tournament brought in 8,704 entries, bringing the prizepool to $11,619,840, with $1,098,220 in prize money awaiting the winner. The battle for that amount continued yesterday on Day 3 with 414 players in the field.

Martin Kabrhel also advanced to the fourth day of play and is the outright chipleader here with a stack of 24,425,000. Close behind him is American player Tim Reilly with a stack of 24,000,000. 55 players will start Day 4 and all of them already have at least $21,025 in the bag. Among the familiar names, Justin Zaki, John Duthie and shortstack Joao Simao are among the advancers.

TOP 10:

Phil Hellmuth close to 18th bracelet
 

Let's move on to Event #43, which is the $1,500 Mixed: Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better; Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better; Big O (7-Handed) with 853 entries and a prizepool of $1,138,755. The winner here is $196,970, and Phil Hellmuth fought for it at the final table. Not just for the prize money, of course, but also for his 18th bracelet. He didn't get it in the end, as he finished 4th in the tournament with a prize of $64,324.

Joe Hachem's son almost won a bracelet
 

Legendary 2005 WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem made an appearance at the Horseshoe & Paris Las Vegas, but now he wasn't here to play, he was here to support his son Daniel, who made the final table of the tournament.

Specifically, it was a brand new tournament on the WSOP schedule, the $1,500 Mixed: No-Limit Hold'em; Pot-Limit Omaha Double Board Bomb Pot (8-Handed), which brought in 1,312 entries and a prizepool of $1,751,520. The $270,820 prize awaited the winner here, and Daniel Hachem battled for it in the final few hours of heads-up play. However, he failed to win his first bracelet and had to settle for second place and $180,541. The winner was Chinese player Xixiang Luo.

Source - wsop.com, pokernews.com, wsop twitter, kings resort, alex elenskiy twitter, youtube, pokerstrategy, wikipedia, espn