With the conclusion of the last The Closer Event of this year's WSOP, we finally revealed the name of the player who won the title of WSOP Player of the Year. After five years of chasing this title, it became Dan Zack, whose resume this year is indeed respectable:
- 16 cashouts
- 4 final tables
- 2 bracelets
This year, Zack first won the $10,000 Omaha Hi/Lo Championship for a nice $440,757, but then added a bracelet from the $10,000 Stud Hi/Lo Championship ($324,174) alongisde that title. As a reward for these beautiful results, he received a special trophy, entry to next year's Main Event and his face smiles from the banners among other PoY winners.
This year's race for player of the year, on the other hand, was relentless towards the legendary Daniel Negreanu, who plays one of the main roles in this race every year. This year, the GG ambassador did absolutely nothing, he was most remembered by the public for nervously breaking his phone or a nasty injury caused by panic during a false gunshot alarm. As for the poker results, PokerKid cashed out in 12 events this year, but mostly they were mincashes and uninteresting wins. The overall summary of this year? A loss of 1.1 million dollars!
And at the very end, let's go back to the main tournament of the entire event, where, as is a good custom, the final table makes millionaires not only from players, but also from countries. Yes, again this year, the tax authorities of the individual countries represented by this year's ten finalists got significantly richer thanks to the players. And what is the overall result? Of the overall $30,950,675 paid out to the players, $5,512,783 went into the state accounts, ie less than 18%.
Three players bypassed the best this year, 8th Philippe Souki from Britain, 4th John Eames also from Britain, and also the overall winner Espen Jordstad from Norway - all three kept their entire winnings, which were exempt from taxes. On the contrary, silver Adrian Attenborough and bronze Michael Duek ended the worst, and handed over 4 million of their 10 million in taxes. So the estimated payout of the final table looks something like this:
Source: PokerNews.com, PokerStrategy.com, WSOP.com