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When the World Series of Poker Europe ended, it was announced that Daniel Negreanu was the Player of the Year, after accumulating over 3900 points. Now, it’s been revealed that a miscalculation of points has resulted in Robert Campbell actually winning the title.

Over the course of the past few years, players across the poker community have been complaining about the way WSOP Player of the Year points are calculated – so, it seems like an issue like this was bound to happen eventually. No one had even noticed the error until a few days after Daniel Negreanu was announced as the winner, due to how complicated the calculations are. No one even questioned his win, likely because he had won Player of the Year twice before.

It was only when a Russian poker reporter made a mention of it on Twitter. Alex Elenskiy looked into the numbers and discovered that event #68 had a few incorrect listings – the most important of which was that Negreanu received 213.1 points when he hadn’t cashed in the tournament.

Eventually, the WSOP was made aware of the error. The organization quickly wrote up a response and congratulated Robert Campbell as the true winner of the 2019 WSOP Player of the Year race.

As a result, the POY points for the Top 10 players now works out to:

  • 1st place:  Robert Campbell – 3,961.31 points
  • 2nd place:  Shaun Deeb – 3,917.32 points
  • 3rd place:  Daniel Negreanu – 3,861.76 points
  • 4th place:  Anthony Zinno – 3,322.00 points
  • 5th place:  Phillip Hui – 3,186.17 points
  • 6th place:  Daniel Zack – 3,126.13 points
  • 7th place:  Dario Sammartino – 3,091.03 points
  • 8th place:  Chris Ferguson – 2,997.10 points
  • 9th place:  Kahle Burns – 2,983.37 points
  • 10th place:  Dash Dudley – 2,860.79 points

As you can see, it only worked out to a 100-point difference between first and third place. So, even a small error in calculation could result in a large debacle.

The WSOP stated that it  was a data entry error by a staff member that resulted in the incorrect calculations. So, the organization will be looking to overhaul the WSOP Player of the Year points system for 2020.

This will surely please the poker community, who have been calling for a change for several years. A new system has the potential to make room for a wider range of players to make it to the top of the list, so we’re very interested in seeing how it plays out next year.

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