Daniel Negreanu Secures Third WSOP Player of the Year Title

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 11^th 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 complained about the POY system, criticising the fact that it seems to be geared more towards 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 has made a Twitter post about how he would change the WSOP Player of the Year scoring 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 may have some sway in changing how WSOP Player of the Year points are calculated. He does make some very good points, and his suggestions could allow for players who aren’t particularly high rollers to potentially come out on top as Player of the Year.

One issue he may not be able to help with is the lack of a prize for the winner. There was once a time when the WSOP Player of the Year would 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 of the Year could potentially be won by a player who isn’t a millionaire already.