After roughly the first week's worth of completed events, 2023 double-bracelet winner Chad Eveslage has assumed the early lead in the World Series of Poker's annual Player of the Year chase. Eveslage, with 1,948.27 POY points to date, sits just ahead of Tyler Brown's 1,739.98 total at this early juncture.
Eveslage became the first two-time bracelet winner of the series when he added a victory in Event #10, $10,000 Dealer's Choice, to the bracelet he collected just four days earlier in Event #5, $1,500 Dealer's Choice. Eveslage's double mastery in the dealer's-choice events brought him his second and third career bracelets, respectively, joining his debut bracelet win in 2022.
Eveslage's wins also extended an amazing run concerning double-bracelet winners in a single year. In every year since 2000 when a full live-action WSOP has been held, at least one player has one two or more bracelets in the same year. (No full WSOP series was held in 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic's greatest impact.) Eveslage's feat marks the 23rd consecutive annual WSOP series where someone has pulled off the bracelet double.
While Eveslage landed his double gold in a pair of relatively smaller-attendance events, Brown's current POY total came from just one massive tourney, the Event #3 $1,000 Mystery Millions. Brown collected a million dollars plus some added bounty payouts when he came out on top of the event's enormous 18,188-entry field.
Bracelet winners always dominate the early-series POY standings and this year is no excpetion to that rule. Early winners hold down the top eight spots in the current 2023 WSOP POY race. Sean Winter, in ninth place, has two final-table finishes in $25,000 high-roller events and is the highest-placed nonwinner in the POY standings at this early juncture.
After Eveslage and Brown, Alexandre Vuilleumier (1,218.65 points), Kenneth O'Donnell (1,210.07), and Jeremy Eyer (1,164.48) round out the early top five in the POY race. The winner will receive a free entry into the 2024 Main Event and will also be honored for posterity with a banner to be displayed every year at the WSOP.
Featured image source: WSOP
