Are Poker’s POY Rankings Broken?

There’s been quite a bit of Twitter talk regarding the Player of the Year formulas used in poker, with a particular emphasis on the Super High Roller tournaments, and whether or not these events should be counted.

Everyone from Phil Hellmuth to Daniel Negreanu to the Global Poker Index’s Alexandre Dreyfus have weighed in and debated the topic on social media.

Furthermore, in my opinion, there is also a secondary problem with the rankings’ systems currently in place that is far more impactful, and far more likely to throw the rankings askance, the lack of buy-in reporting.

I’ll talk about both of these issues below.

But how much money did you lose?

Anyone who has ever tried to explain being a professional poker player has certainly faced the above question: “So you won $123,500 last year… but how much did you lose?”

It’s a pain in the ass to have to explain, but it’s a common question from people who don’t realize you track your combined wins and losses and don’t differentiate between the two. But in tournament poker rankings this is not the case, as the current systems only track the wins, so the question of “How much did you lose?” is actually very pertinent.

This is why the Player of the Year awards handed out carry little weight for me. Yes, the winners are usually deserved of being recognized as having had a great year, but to call them the best tournament player of the year is a bit of a stretch. “The best” in poker is arbitrary.

Buy-ins still wouldn’t solve the problem

Even if we had buy-in reporting what would it tell us?

Would the best player be the person with the highest ROI? Would it be the best ROI in Major tournaments? Would it be the player with the most money won? Would it be the player with the most consistent results, be it cashes, final tables, or wins?

The point is this; the best poker player in any format is debatable.

My Fix: Minimize the importance of the POY

Thankfully there is very little intrinsic value for winning POY awards, so it’s not some ultimate injustice. Although it seems like we are starting to move towards an era where POY winners will receive something beyond some recognition and a trophy, which I don’t like.

What we should do is make the POY awards more about recognition and less about value. Winning the Super Bowl MVP or the Conn Smythe is a nice feather in your cap, and may result in some kind of sponsorship value down the road, but it’s not on the same level as winning the Championship in your respective sport, or being the scoring leader, or just being marketable to begin with.

Poker POY awards should be thought of in the same way; they don’t declare the best of the best anymore than the WSOP Champion is the “World Champion.” They’re simply a way to acknowledge the person who had the best PERFORMANCES, not results over the course of the year.

The Super High Roller dilemma

Now it’s time to move on to the second part of this column, the part that has been in the spotlight, the Super High Roller debate.

The whole argument is a bit silly to me because Super High Rollers are to live tournaments what live tournaments are to online tournaments. What I mean is they are not the same and shouldn’t be counted the same.

We should treat Super High Roller tournaments as a separate entity, because that’s what they are, just like online tournaments are not mixed with live tournaments, and sites like SharkScope differentiate between players participating in $5 S&G’s opposed to players participating in $500 or $5,000 S&G’s.

If we compare a SHR to the postseason and the All Star Game in major sports, we start to see why your typical tournament with a buy-in of somewhere between $1,000 and $10,000 and a tournament with a $100,000 buy-in that also allows for reentries are two different animals.

Super High Rollers are not “Open” events

The case could be made that every player in the NBA or in MLB has the opportunity to play in the postseason and the All Star Game (you just have to be on a winning team or be one of the top players), just like the case can be made that every professional poker player has the opportunity to participate in a Super High Roller tournament, but we all know it’s patently untrue.

Only a small percentage will ever get to play in multiple postseasons or in All Star Games and only a small percentage of poker pros will ever participate in a SHR tournament, let alone consistently play in them.

These events are exclusive but are operating under the guise of inclusion.

This is why All Star Game and postseason statistics and records are kept separate in all major sports. It’s unfair to the players who for whatever reason didn’t get an opportunity to play in these events.

Take last year’s WSOP POY race for instance, where Loni Harwood (a tournament grinder who has to play within her bankroll) lost the race to Daniel Negreanu by virtue of Negreanu’s ability to not only travel to Europe and Australia to play in additional WSOP tournaments, but who was also able to buy into any tournament he desired.

Now, did Negreanu have a better WSOP than Harwood? If you factor in just Las Vegas than the answer is no, but because Harwood couldn’t play in “the postseason” and couldn’t compete in poker’s “All Star Games” she lost out on the award.

Nothing against Negreanu of course, he just played the game given the rules that were laid out.

My Fix: Separate SHR’s

All that being said, I don’t think we can simply cutoff tournaments at a certain buy-in amount. Some high-priced events should be excluded, and in my opinion a couple SHR’s isn’t going to throw the whole system out of whack. So here is my proposal.

As far I know, every sport keeps their All Star Game and postseason records separate from their regular season stats and records, so why not do the same for all tournaments with buy-ins of over $10,000 with less than 100 unique entries?

That would separate events like the World Poker Tour Championship, the Poker Players Championship, and the $25k Holdem event at the WSOP from the average $25k High-Roller tournament at an EPT or WPT stop. It would also solve the problem of reentries skewing the actual number of entries in a tournament and keep virtually every SHR tournament from counting towards POY rankings.

Sure, some SHR’s would still make the cut, but a player couldn’t enter 10 of them every year and completely upset the balance of the POY rankings.

Play Now

100% up to $3,000 Bonus

Bovada is our most recommended ONLINE CASINO and POKER ROOM for US players with excellent deposit options. Get your 100% signup bonus today.