Banner Year: Dan Zack Leads WSOP Player of the Year Race; Inside the Annual Standings
One of the most prestigious titles at the World Series of Poker each year is the Player of the Year (POY) award. A player has won the honor every year since 2004, starting with Daniel Negreanu in that first year.
In 2021, Josh Arieh came out on top after taking two bracelets during the series. Each POY winner has a banner hung in his honor during the WSOP. Here’s a look at the annual award and some of those in the hunt for the title so far.
Player of the Year leaderboard details
Earlier this year the WSOP announced the criteria on what it would take to grab the exclusive title in 2022. Players in the hunt receive points depending on the event they play and the POY race formula.
“The formula is loosely based on the highly successful point system that has been used on the WSOP Circuit for many years,” series officials noted. “That scale will be used for each bracelet event, with modifiers based on the buy-in amount and number of entries.”
The WSOP website also includes a POY calculator that shows how the points are defined. Certain events do not count toward the POY title, such as:
- Michigan and Pennsylvania online bracelets
- WSOP Europe
- Casino Employees Championship
- Seniors NLHE
- Tag Team NLHE
- Super Seniors NLHE
- Ladies Championship
Prizes and current leaderboard
One change this year is that only a single winner earns prizes, which include:
- 2023 WSOP Main Event seat
- winner’s trophy
- POY banner at Paris/Bally’s tournament area
The 2021 race featured some big names with Phil Hellmuth coming in second and Negreanu in third. After his win, Arieh had no problem rubbing it in Hellmuth’s face a bit to kick off the 2022 series.
So far this year, Dan Zack currently leads in the standings after two bracelet wins as well as third- and eighth-place finishes. He recently spoke with USPoker after his first bracelet win about chasing the POY title.
“The rest of the series for me is just full steam ahead,” he said. “I’m now third in the player of the year standings, so I’ll be chasing that as hard as I can. I might try to add the $50,000, $100,000, and $250,000 No Limit Hold’em events to my schedule, but otherwise I was already planning to fire everything else.”
With a win, a runner-up finish, and several cashes this summer, Daniel Weinman sits second in the standings. David Peters, Joao Simao, and Alex Foxen round out the top five. Here’s a look at the POY standings as of June 29.
2022 WSOP Player of the Year standings
Rank Name Points
1 Daniel Zack 3,589.46
2 Daniel Weinman 2,778.82
3 David Peters 2,222.30
4 Joao Simao Peres 2,204.97
5 Alex Foxen 2,127.50
6 Phil Ivey 2,097.31
7 Shaun Deeb 2,032.73
8 Chad Eveslage 2,012.12
9 Scott Seiver 2,011.16
10 Michael Moncek 1,974.41
Previous POY winners
Since its inception, only Negreanu has won the POY honor twice. The list of winners includes some of the biggest names in poker. Here’s a look at ll past winners.
- 2004 – Daniel Negreanu
- 2005 – Allen Cunningham
- 2006 – Jeff Madsen
- 2007 – Tom Schneider
- 2008 – Erick Lindgren
- 2009 – Jeffrey Lisandro
- 2010 – Frank Kassela
- 2011 – Ben Lamb
- 2012 – Greg Merson
- 2013 – Daniel Negreanu
- 2014 – George Danzer
- 2015 – Mike Gorodinsky
- 2016 – Jason Mercier
- 2017 – Chris Ferguson
- 2018 – Shaun Deeb
- 2019 – Robert Campbell
- 2021 – Josh Arieh