Hellmuth upset about math
Shaun Deeb, ever the tournament grinder, won his second World Series of Poker Player of the Year (POY) title this summer, just beating out triple-bracelet winner Benny Glaser and Main Event and Poker Players Championship king Michael Mizrachi. But not everyone is happy that Deeb won it, especially 17-time bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who took shots at Deeb and the WSOP this week.
That was the final straw for Deeb, who shot right back.
In a video posted to social media Tuesday, Hellmuth gave faint praise to the WSOP for a well-run festival and Deeb for winning POY, but then lit into the WSOP for the way the POY scoring was reworked. Before last year, players could add to their leaderboard total by cashing in tournament after tournament after tournament. But for the 2024 WSOP, the formula was changed to “quality over quantity,” with just a player’s top ten scoring finishes – and only one online event – counting toward their total.
Hellmuth said that he doesn’t think any poker pro believes the “right” person won, citing Glaser’s and Mizrachi’s tremendous accomplishments. He called the notion that Deeb “deserved” to win “bullshit.”
“…second place, second place, third place? That’s bullshit,” Hellmuth said, referring to some of Deeb’s tournament finishes. Deeb also won a bracelet this summer, the seventh of his career. Clearly, the POY formula favored those four finishes, plus six others, over what Glaser and Mizrachi did. It was a close race, but the math favored Deeb.
Hellmuth also said that Deeb had a hand in changing the POY rules and implied that there must have been some funny business going on for him to end up winning the title this year.
Deeb says enough is enough
The same day Hellmuth posted the video, Deeb begrudgingly responded with his own social media post, saying, “There’s been too much misinformation floating around, so let’s set the record straight.”
He started by emphasizing that he had no role in the POY calculation change and that “it hurt me more than it helped.”
“I play more events at the WSOP than almost anyone, year after year,” Deeb explained. “The old system favored players like me who put in massive volume. The new cap flattened the field — and I still came out on top.”
Deeb also took umbrage at the idea that poker pros didn’t think the “right player won,” saying that he has received loads of support “from players who understand the structure and saw the grind firsthand.”
He called his 2025 World Series of Poker resume “consistency, depth, and performance.”
After praising Glaser (“crushed it”) and Mizrachi (“legendary stuff”), Deeb added, “But POY isn’t about highlight reels. It’s a points-based system. It rewards steady results across the entire series — not popularity, not narrative. And by that measure, I earned it.”
“I didn’t create the formula, and I didn’t benefit unfairly from it.”
Deeb concluded his post with his own criticism…of Phil Hellmuth.
“Never thought I’d be backed up by @RealKidPoker while getting blindsided by Phil Hellmuth — but here we are. Some people evolve. Others just keep rewriting history to stay the hero of their own story,” Deeb wrote.
“Props to Mizrachi. Props to Benny. And to Phil? Congrats — on spreading false info, trying to hijack Mizrachi’s Hall of Fame spotlight (shoutout Jared Bleznick it was his suggestion first), and once again proving that volume doesn’t equal accuracy.”
Image credit: PokerGO.com
The post Shaun Deeb Fires Back at Phil Hellmuth Over WSOP Player of the Year Criticism appeared first on Poker News Daily.
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