2025 World Series of Poker May 27th - July 16th

...that nickname did not age well...lol...

POY is nonsense. They've tweaked the formula somewhat but you could have a losing year and still win POY. The fact he could win these 2 events and not win POY shows what a joke it is.

I disagree about automatically winning POY. Mizrachi already got $11 million and immediate HOF induction and everyone is saying it’s the greatest accomplishment in WSOP history, which I’m not going to disagree with.

But POY is constructed to be an award for consistent performance across all of the events during the entire series, not just the biggest events. There’s a reason you need 5 cashes to even qualify for it. It’s designed to encourage top players to play in like the $1.5k events, and rack up cashes across all disciplines. I don’t necessarily think “Player of the Year” needs to be the same thing as “Biggest Story of the Year”.

What a bizarre take.

Mizrachi got about 1700 points for winning the ME and about 1200 points for winning the PPC. If you win some $1500 tournament, you get about 1000 points. The formula doesn't weigh enough for the prize pool of the tournament. You don't want the ME or PPC or other high roller winner to be automatically near the top of the leaderboard, but that is ridiculous.

There are clearly some people, like Negreanu and Shaun Deeb, who appear to be partly playing for POY, playing a zillion events, etc.

It seems like POY is mainly going to go to the players focusing on the smaller field events (mainly mixed games, including obscure variants as well as high rollers for all games).

It's just hard to rack up 10+ good results over the course of the WSOP for players focusing on (mostly NLH) events with thousands of players.

I still can't believe Mizrachi didn't win POY given that he won probably the two most prestigious events in the same year. Maybe the point system could use some tweaking? I'm not sure but that's talk for next year. I have a feeling Mizrachi's not too disappointed about not winning POY though.

How so? How does it make sense to give poy to someone who loses all summer or maybe wins small?
The formula is better than it used to be but it's still silly.

Hardly anyone wins 2 bracelets in a year and MM managed to do it in probably the 2 most "prestigious" events of the year.

Benny not winning seems more egregious than grinder not winning. Though I think the point system is mostly ok. I'd give more points to bigger field events and put less emphasis on buyin size.

Glaser and Deeb had pretty comparable WSOP accomplishments, and the finished with very similar point totals. Glaser only lost by 40 points out of more than 4000 points total. If he doesn't stone bubble the $100k PLO, Glaser is probably POY, but I think it's pretty close on the eye test regardless.

It was also interesting to see how the limit to 10 cashes affected things. Deeb had about 800 points disqualified by this limit. Glaser lost about 450 points, and Mizrachi only lost 100.

Deeb wins 1 bracelet
Glaser wins 3 bracelets
Grinder wins 2 : PPC and Main Event!

and somehow Deeb wins POY. It's clear the POY points are structured for who can pound the most ~min-cashes by playing almost the whole schedule, which I think is a bit of a joke. There should be a much bigger point separation from Bracelet winner to also-ran final tableist imho.

I dunno, man. The difference between first and second is pretty insubstantial.

There -is- a big separation between first and second. Winning the bracelet gets double the points that second place does. This is an even bigger difference than the prize pool!

They made this correction a few years ago. And they also corrected the "get as many mincashes as possible" issue by limiting points to ten cashes. But again, bracelets aren't the -only- thing that counts. POY is designed to award consistent performance over all events.

Deeb didn't just win one bracelet. And he didn't just get a bunch of mincashes. He also got two 2nds, a 3rd, and eight cashes larger than Glaser's 4th biggest cash.

I don't even like Deeb and I don't think he's obviously the POY. But I do think that the resume he collected is very close to Glaser's, and indeed in terms of point total, they two ended up almost identical. There is a very reasonable argument for both of them.

Welp, I guess it was just a cooler.

Mincashes have been made pretty worthless by the current POY formula. Deeb had the most live cashes at the 2025 WSOP with 18, but only 10 counted, and none were mincashes.

The player who had the 2nd most live cashes was Jake Schwartz with 17, and as far as I can tell he didn't even finish Top 100 in POY points.

Grinder had 12 cashes at this WSOP. He didn't lose POY because he didn't have enough min cashes. He lost because he had too many. Apart from his two massive wins, his only other deep run was a 25th in the Battle of the Ages event. He really needed one or two more deep runs.

Deeb had a 1st, two 2nds, and a 3rd.

I'm not sure I love the scoring system when Deeb can finish ahead of Glaser and Grinder while "only" winning 1 event, but min cashes aren't what put him over the top. He had far more high finishes. The POY system rewards deep runs.

Yea you guys are right on the min-cash thing I admit. Still though, not sure how a 3 bracelet winner loses POY to a 1 bracelet winner with 2 2nds & 3rd. Maybe it’s how points are given based on field size or buyin amount? Maybe need to rethink those variables and how they impact the formula outcome.

Glaser’s bracelets were all in lower buy-in mixed game events that tend to have smaller prize pools. And his resume just wasn’t nearly as deep as Deeb’s. His 4th biggest live score from a POY perspective was 114th place in the $1500 Closer. It was a really close race going down to the wire and Deeb slightly edged him out.

It’s still true that three bracelets gets more points than a 1st, two 2nds, and a 3rd. It was the rest of Deeb’s scores that put him ahead.

it's only top 10 results and one online so some of his mincashes didn't count.

everyone complains about the formula but it's hard to quantify best cause winning the 50k ppc and the main probably should just auto get you it but then is it too many points vs everything else? idk it'll always be argued no matter what

100% agree that WSOP of the year shuldnt go to whoplays the most events but I feel more than 10 should count, at teh end of the day playing maby events and cashing isn't easy is it? i thik the new system is beter than the old one but imsure it can get looked at more

I agree 100% with Phil Hellmuth on this. 3 Bracelets should win over a collection of also-rans. And ME+PPC should also win over basket of also-rans.

Deeb and the other guy would both 100% trade their WSOP results this year for Grinder’s. So would every other poker player in the world.

Yes because Grinder won the most $

Most $ won is probably not the best metric for POY