Player of the Year Race Updates

With the 2016 WSOP over, we have a clearer picture of who leads the 2016 Player of the Year Races. We focus on the top 2 – GPI, and Card Player since are the two most respected. There were some big jumps and changes among the top 10 with players making final tables and winning bracelets during the WSOP. It was a constant changing of positions during the series, but now that's its complete, we can see who leads half way through the year. Fedor Holz is still our leader on both races, his amazing first half of the year propelled him to the front. After winning the Big One for One Drop his lead grew even larger. The kid dominates the high stakes tournaments this year. I don't think we've seen a player display such dominance in quite some time. Lucky for the other players in the race, Holz announced a semi-retirement from the game. This will allow other players to potentially pass Holz with 6 months left to play. Adrian Mateos is the closest, but still 400 points behind Holz. If he can manage a few final tables, or a key win, he could overtake the leader and become the player of the year. Paul Volpe, Chance Kornuth, and Jason Mercier were helped with a strong showing in the 2016 WSOP. Merciers 2 wins and multiple final tables pushed him in to the top 10. The same held true for Volpe. Kornuth is helped by his strong main event showing and sits in 4th place. The remaining top 10 players on the GPI player of the year race are about 800 points behind and stand little chance to take the top spot. Over on the Card Player leaderboard, we see a different picture. Their points are more based on larger player fields, rather than number of wins. While Merciers performance was impressive, his wins and final tables came in small fields. He isn't even in the top 25 on this race. He sits at 31 right now. Fedor Holz remains the leader in this race as well, and hold a larger lead of over 1,000 points. Justin Bonomo is in 2nd, who was helped out by his WSOP performance. We could see a new player come out of nowhere once the main event completes in October. The winner of the 2016 WSOP main event will earn 3,300 points. Ironically, only 1 player at the final table has any points towards the Card Player, Player of the Year race. If the main event were decided right now, the winner would jump in to 11th place. And only 20 total points outside of making the top 10.