The countdown to the 2026 WSOP starts here. 100 bracelets. The world's best players. And PokerOrg will be on the floor from start to finish.
Shaun Deeb is one of the most respected, successful, and outspoken tournament grinders in the game. At the 2025 WSOP, he finished runner-up three times, won the $100K PLO for his 8th bracelet, and captured his second WSOP Player of the Year title.
The Player of the Year race began at the WSOPE in Prague. How has that affected your gameplan to win back-to-back POY titles?
I had two seconds and a ninth-place finish in Prague. I'm very happy with those results, and it was pretty sick to get such a good score in that first Omaha event.
My guess is that my second-place finish in the Omaha event will have the lowest POY point value among all the qualifying tournaments this year based on buy-in and field size. So, getting that many points out of an event that pays so little was a big win for me.
Can you break down how the POY scoring system works this year and why first place is so important?
The way the scoring system works, first place is almost double a second-place finish. That first-to-second jump is a massive amount of points.
Obviously, I'm going to have 15 scores. I had two seconds and a ninth in Prague. The ninth was a big inflection point in the scoring. And those are three scores that are going to be in my top 15 at the end of the year.
If somehow those scores aren't in my top 15, I've won the POY a hundred times over.
Deeb's defensive approach at the 2026 WSOP
It's a pretty amazing set of results for such a short series...
To play eight or nine tournaments and have three good scores is crazy. 20% of my POY scoring is done – now I just have to fill it in.
If I win a bracelet in Vegas or at Paradise, I'm a huge favorite for POY, although I know I'm going to have a lot of other final tables and deep runs. I expect my total score will be very hard to beat.
How will it affect what you play in the summer?
In years past, I've kind of avoided the huge field tournaments, but a win gives you a huge amount of points. They're obviously very hard to win, but if I find myself chasing towards the end of the series, there's a lot of incentive to try to win one. With my current scores, I may shift away from large-field events.
Why will you avoid them?
Because in a $1,500 NLH event with 10,000 people, it's unlikely that I'm going to get a score that's in my top 15. I don't want to play three days in that tournament for 150 points, which I'll never use.
I might change my strategy based on the results in Prague. If I had bricked Prague, I probably would have a different approach going forward. It's kind of like the strategy you apply when you're leading a golf tournament – you play a little more conservatively. When you're losing, you've got to be aggressive.
You're probably not going to find anyone to bet against you now.
Well, I definitely don’t have the official lead, but probably the theoretical lead by a significant margin. And because of that, I kind of need to take a more defensive approach with my schedule as opposed to what I would have played under the old scoring system.
That's kind of how I see things: optimizing my points per hour or my percentage of getting a score that counts. It'll be interesting to see if my strategy works. But I also need to make sure I have 15 cashes.
I definitely don't have as much of a game plan as in previous years, but interviews like this make me think more about it, and then I make adjustments. It's not like I'm going to skip events and take a day off. I'll still probably play every day, but I'll definitely be leaning towards the higher buy-in events.
Follow Shaun Deeb on X.
The 2026 WSOP starts on May 26 and runs through August 5, when the Main Event champion will be crowned.
