The WSOP Player of the Year race is heating up, with Shaun Deeb leading a packed group of front runners that includes Benny Glasder, Martin Kabrhel, and Scott Bohlman. As the series-long competition nears its final stretch, Mark Checkwicz — winner of the $5,000 Seniors High Roller in 2024 — has some ideas on how the contest could be improved in future.
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I’m never going to win the WSOP POY award but I’ve followed the race for the past few years. It’s fun to root for players, and a lot of people enjoy it.
For example, while I might have no chance of winning PoY, there are people who I’ll follow each year. For example, this year it’s Benny Glaser. He comes across as a guy I can root for, and a good guy I’d like to see do well. Other people might enjoy supporting some of the bigger stars, or the ‘bad boys’ of poker. Whomever you’re following, the PoY race gives us recreational players a fun sweat for the summer.
But there’s one aspect of the PoY race that’s always fascinated me: there is a transparency issue right from the start. The WSOP has never shown how many entries or re-entries each player has had.
While not every player is going to have a realistic chance of winning the PoY award, it stands to reason that those who have backers, more resources and more bullets to fire are going to have a far greater chance.
Is that a true measure of a player’s skill? I don’t think so. If skill is what we’re interested in with the PoY race — and I think it should be — then something needs to change. That’s why I believe that a player’s first bullet should be the only one that counts for PoY.
‘Your first bullet shows how talented you are’
Some top players are cycling through bullets at a rate that a lot of people outside poker would be shocked by. ‘It cost $10K to enter, but this person entered 7 times in 6 hours?’ That’s not an option that’s available to most players.
In my opinion, how far you advance on your first bullet really shows how talented you are on a very pure level. For those players that can rebuy multiple times, their strategy changes; they don’t need to protect their first buy-in as much if they can afford 5 more of them.
Instead, they can take on more variance in a bid to build a big stack early on, and if at first they don’t succeed, they can simply reload. In my eyes, that’s not a level playing field for such a prestigious award.
Imagine if we countered that advantage — purely for the PoY race — by only counting points for a player’s first buy-in? Now, if a player is seeking that PoY banner, their strategy has to change, and it’s going to bring them in line with the rest of the field from a strategic point of view.
I think that would be really interesting, and is the only way to give complete purity to such a prestigious accomplishment as being PoY.
‘It would be good for the top pros’
The way PoY results are tracked is similar to The Hendon Mob (THM). THM is very convenient for players’ spouses! It’s like, ‘Look how much I’ve won, honey!’ Or, ‘Look at that player, they’ve won over 10 million dollars, they must be rich!’ But, like the PoY, you don’t see any of the negative results, you only see the wins.
The way poker tournaments have evolved over the past 15 years is also a factor. If you were to look back at when the PoY award started, back in 2004 with Daniel Negreanu’s win, you’d see that a lot more events were freezeouts so the award had purity. The re-entry thing took over after 2010 or so, and it really favors pros with deep pockets and rich backers.
I can understand why those players who are competing for PoY might not like the idea of changing the way it's scored, so in the spirit of compromise, how about this?
Players would still get PoY points for rebuys, but the points available would decrease with each and every buy-in.
That way, it would be a fairer system without completely overturning the applecart. People following the PoY race would also get a more realistic view of the situation; they’d see the points scored and know how many bullets a player fired in a tournament. It would ‘pull back the curtain’ and I think a lot of people would be interested.
But in all honesty, I don’t think changing the scoring system would be bad for the top pros, I think it would actually be good for them. It would raise their game, and we all want to see that.
It would be good for every other player, too. The pros wouldn’t be punishing the recreational players so much with big all-ins on draws in level 3, for example; they’d be playing the same strategy as everyone else.
Then, if you beat them — even if it’s their first bullet of many — you’ll know: you’re beating their best game.
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Additional image courtesy of WSOP/Spenser Sembrat.
