After a very close race, Daniel Negreanu has earned the WSOP Player of the Year title for 2019.
WSOP Player of the Year Goes to Negreanu
Daniel Negreanu has had a tremendous year. He landed some very impressive cashes at the WSOP in Las Vegas (the biggest of which was worth over $1.7M), and he’s now been named Player of the Year for the third time.
In the final stretch of the year, it was between Negreanu, Robert Campbell and Shaun Deeb. Heading into the WSOPE, Negreanu was in the lead which could have been snatched away by Deeb or Campbell. In fact, Deeb would have placed first if he managed to come fifth or higher in the WSOPE’s EuroColossus tournament. However, Negreanu prevailed when Deeb ended up in 11th place.
Negreanu, who is considered one of the world’s best professional poker players, managed to cash in seven of the 15 events on the WSOPE schedule – which is an impressive feat, even though he didn’t win himself a bracelet this year. Combined with all of his previous WSOP wins throughout 2019, he ended up with a total of 4074.88 Player of the Year points. Campbell received 3961.31 points while Deeb received 3917.32 points.
Over the years, players around the world have complainedabout the POY system, criticising the fact that it seems to be ge lol646 ared moretowards high roller players.
The WSOP then created a new scoring system in 2018 that awards points based on far players run in any specific event. However, there is still a problem with this structure as players can still earn points without making any money – for example, a player who rebuy into a tournament several times may not make a profit when they cash but they will still earn points.
Despite having won the title three times now, Negreanu hasmade a Twitter post about how he would change the WSOP Player of the Yearscoring system. His suggestions are as follows:
Here is how I would fix WSOP POY:
Limit cashes that count to 12
Make min cashes worth close to nothing
Increase points for top 27 finishes
Increase points for final tables
Decrease points for WSOP main event final table
Quality over Quantity
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) November 3, 2019
Since Negreanu is such an influential poker player, he mayhave some sway in changing how WSOP Player of the Year points are calculated. Hedoes make some very good points, and his suggestions could allow for playerswho aren’t particularly high rollers to potentially come out on top as Playerof the Year.
One issue he may not be able to help with is the lack of aprize for the winner. There was once a time when the WSOP Player of the Yearwould win a prize; for example, Negreanu’s first POY award earned him a truck.However, that’s not the case anymore – but it may be reinstated if Player ofthe Year could potentially be won by a player who isn’t a millionaire already.
