The WSOP player of the year race determines who the hottest running tournament poker player is in the world, the “it boy.” With the WSOP in Las Vegas running 55 bracelet tournaments, and with many of the top players in the world, especially those who play mixed games and non hold-em games, playing upwards of 30 tournaments a piece, the WSOP Player of the Year race is the ultimate proving ground. The title of hottest player on the planet quickly changed hands during the two month poker smorgasborg we like to call the WSOP.
The WSOP Player of the Year is calculated based off of 62 events, 55 WSOP events, and 7 WSOP-Europe Events. Points are allocated based on two main factors, the buy-in and the size of the field. Both variables are given multipliers. The bigger the tournament field and the higher the buy-in, the more points the winner gets.
Coming into the WSOP, Jason Mercier had the “hottest player” rep for a good while. Mercier’s run good is so legendary it even had its own Twitter hash tags #runninglikemercier. Friends would start their tournaments tweeting, “I just wanna run like Mercier one time!” It got to the absurd where fans would get silly with it, “At the McDonald’s Drive-Thru, ordered one Big Mac, they put two in the bag #runninglikeMercier.”
As the WSOP grew later, other pretenders to the throne emerged. Familiar names and faces like the great Frenchman Elky “Bertrand” Grospellier rose up, who caught the poker world’s attention with his $331K bracelet win in the $10k Seven Card Stud Championship, making him only the fourth player to win WPT, EPT, and WSOP titles.
Other names to make a run at the WSOP Player of the Year included the outgoing Englishman, Chris Moorman, whose rowdy cheering sections makes final tables look like football matches. Brian Rast also made a run at WSOP hotness glory by winning two bracelets this summer ($1,500 PLO and $50k players championship).
Then Phil Hellmuth made a late run for the WSOP Player of the Year title, briefly holding it for a week, by taking second place in three WSOP events, including the Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better, the $10,000 NL Duece to Sevent Draw Lowball, and the $50 Poker Player’s Championship. With only eight events left, the main event, and seven WSOP-E events, and with Hellmuth sitting at the top, it looked like Hellmuth would win the WSOP Player of the Year title, unless something crazy happened.
Then along came Benba. Ben Lamb is hotter than the surface of the sun! Take a look at his WSOP 2011 hot streak!
-1st Place $10k PLO, $814,000
-2nd Place $3k PLO, $259,000
-8th Place $50k, Players Championship $201,000
-12th Place $10k, NLHE 6-handed, $56,140
Now Ben Lamb has final tabled the granddaddy of them all, the WSOP Main Event, which will resume in November and pays first place $8.7 Million! Ben Lamb’s November Nine status guarantees him at least 100 WSOP POY points. Lamb is currently in fifth place with 20 million chips. If he wins first place in November, he’ll receive a massive 500 points!
A long way Lamb has come. Seven years ago he decided to take a a year off college to play poker for a living in the small stakes brick and mortar games around Tulsa, Oklahoma. Until now, most of his success came online under the name “Benba”, where he’s won events in the FTOPS, SCOOP, as well as the Sunday 500 on Pokerstars.
Now Benba is a lock to win the WSOP Player of the Year race, unless one of the top five can stage a miracle comeback by winning one of the big WSOP-Europe events coming up in October. And now Ben Lamb’s got his own fan base and Twitter hashtags! His fans and followers tweet when they are #playing like benba, #runninglikebenba, and fully expect him to win the main event. Lamb tweeted a picture yesterday to his friends and followers, a picture of his ocean view from his vacation suite in the Turks and Cacaos! Get on the Lambwagon!
Current Player of the Year Standings (excluding WSOP Main Event in progress):
# Name Points
1 Phil Hellmuth* (officially 2nd) 710.25
2 Ben Lamb 659.05 (guaranteed 100 points in November when Main Event Final Table resumes)
3 Brian Rast 550.00
4 Chris Moorman 486.20
5 Bertrand Grospellier 479.25
6 Samuel Stein 416.13
7 Joe Ebanks 410.25
8 Owais Ahmed 408.03
9 Mikhail Lakhitov 401.80
10 Jason Mercier 385.33