The World Series of Poker has come up with new rules to officiate it’s Player of the Year race and also released a new payout schedule that will guarantee a min-cash is worth at least double the amount of the event’s buy-in.
The changes come in time for this year’s WSOP that is taking place in Las Vegas from now until July 17.
Player of Year Race “made simple”
WSOP officials made a significant change to how its Player of the Year will be tallied for 2024. Instead of counting the results from all player’s cashes, players will only have their top 10 cashes applied to their final totals.
Players also need at least five cashes to qualify. And only one online bracelet win will be counted is a player happens to bag more than one online bracelet.
As in the past, certain events do not generate points for the Player of the Year race. They are the $500 Casino employees event, the three Senior events, the Ladies championship, and the tag-team event.
The rest of the rules, a points calculator, and a current leaderboard can be found here.
Payout structure also changed
The WSOP also made a slight change to its payout structure for 2024. All minimum cashes will now receive at least double the amount of the event’s single buy-in.
While this gives a bit more money to those just barely securing a slip to hand the cashier, it takes a good chunk off those who make the final table and are going for the bracelet.
Let’s compare the pay structure of the 2023 $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better event to how it would be if the 2024 payout rules were applied.
Last year’s event attracted 1,143. The winner, Jim Collopy, took home $262,542 and his third bracelet. The top 172 were paid a minimum of $2,404. The runner-up received $162,226.
If that event was paid out using his year’s structure, Collopy — who is known as “Mr. Big Queso” — would have been paid $244,422, or nearly $20,000 less than what he actually took home to Maryland. Second place would have done a little better than last year at $162,948.
That money would have gone to the bottom 172, who would have taken home $3,005, or $601 more than last year. The same number of players were paid.
Here’s another example, using last year’s $10,000 seven card stud championship, which attracted 130. The smaller the field size, the less impact it will have to the bottom line of the winner.
The min cash in that event was $16,378. That would have increased to $20,472 is this year’s rules were applied. Brian Yoon won $311,433 for taking all the chips. If he won it this year, he would have been paid about $11,000 less. Dan Shak, who finished in second, would have been paid about $9,000 more.
The WSOP provides a handy-dandy payout calculator on its website. Click here to play around with it.
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