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Phil Hellmuth holds most of the WSOP’s top career-long records—including most bracelets (16), most final tables (64) and most in-the-money finishes (165)—but he has never won the Player of the Year award.
Thursday, June 2, 2022 | 2 a.m.
For the first time since 2019, the World Series of Poker has returned to its traditional spot on the calendar, with a full summer of tournaments ahead.
The planned 2020 event was scrapped and replaced by a shorter online series amid worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns. Live tournaments returned in 2021, but they were staged from September to November.
Event organizers expressed a desire to get back to the summer in 2022, and that’s what happened when the first of 88 tournaments kicked off on May 31. The action will be nonstop through the summer-capping Tournament of Champions on July 18.
Here are five things to watch through it all.
1. New digs
For the first time in the event’s 52-year history, the WSOP will take place on the Las Vegas Strip.
Bally’s and Paris Las Vegas are the new joint hosts for an event that started Downtown at Binion’s Horseshoe in 1970 before moving to the Rio in 2005. Relocation rumors persisted almost as soon as the WSOP moved to the Rio, so the latest shift isn’t all that surprising.
But there will be an adjustment period. In many ways, the Rio seemed tailor-made for the summerlong parade of poker. The large convention center away from the rest of the property provided ample space for thousands of players and room to build out temporary structures like cafeterias and shops. That should be somewhat replicable going forward, but the Rio’s massive parking lot and relatively light traffic, which allowed players to get out quickly for dinner breaks during tournaments, will not be.
That might sound trivial to spectators or television viewers, but it’s of great importance to players. Ironing out the details to smooth the transition will be the biggest challenge facing WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart and his staff this summer.
2. Aldemir’s title defense
With more than 6,000 entrants in each of the past 15 years, the $10,000 buy-in Main Event is now commonly won by a previously unknown player. But that wasn’t the case last year.
Germany’s Koray Aldemir outlasted a field of 6,650 players to win the $8 million first-place prize. The 31-year-old had already amassed $12 million in career tournament earnings before becoming poker’s world champion, a title that always places a great deal of pressure on the winner heading into the following summer.
Aldemir appears up for it. He has been much more active and visible than past winners, appearing on the latest season of High Stakes Poker from the local PokerGo studio at Aria, alongside the likes of Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu.
Aldemir is expected to be around most of the summer, vying for another WSOP championship bracelet. All eyes will be on his performance, especially beginning on July 3, when this year’s Main Event kicks off for a two-week run before a winner emerges.
3. Hellmuth’s POY pursuit
Main Event champion remains the World Series of Poker’s most prestigious title, but given the difficulty to prevail with such large field sizes, the biggest-name pros set more realistic sights elsewhere. The Player of the Year race has arguably become the go-to goal in that regard—especially for the WSOP’s most decorated player.
Phil Hellmuth holds most of the WSOP’s top career-long records—including most bracelets (16), most final tables (64) and most in-the-money finishes (165)—but he has never won the Player of the Year award. He has finished second four times, including to fellow veteran pro Josh Arieh last year.
The 57-year-old Hellmuth has vowed to go all-out for Player of the Year this year, too, telling Pokernews.com “it f*cking hurts” that he hasn’t won it yet.
The odds are heavily stacked against a semi-professional or recreational player winning Player of the Year, because it requires amassing points in tournaments throughout the summer. Hellmuth’s occasional rival, Vegas local Negreanu, is the only player who has won it twice (2004 and 2013) since the award was introduced in 2004.
4. Locals aiming for the top
Ali Imsirovic has never won a WSOP bracelet, but he’ll enter the event as the No. 1 ranked player in the world by Global Poker Index for the second straight year. But the Bosnian-born, Vancouver, Washington, resident’s margin at the top of the rankings is slim.
Three players—two of whom are Las Vegas-based with three bracelets apiece: No. 2 Jeremy Ausmus and No. 4 Chance Kornuth—are within 300 points. Both won their latest WSOP titles last year, with the 42-year-old Ausmus taking down a $50,000 buy-in High Roller pot-limit Omaha event for $1.1 million and the 35-year-old Kornuth outlasting a $10,000 short-deck no-limit hold’em field for $194,670.
Ausmus is best-known for making the Main Event final table in 2012, while Kornuth initially rose to prominence as an online player. Fellow veteran Shannon Shorr, a 36-year-old veteran from Birmingham, Alabama, currently sits at No. 3 by GPI. Shorr has 70 career in-the-money WSOP finishes but no victories.
5. Crypto crash effect
Overall participation numbers had increased virtually every year at the WSOP until 2021, which saw a dip—understandable given the rescheduling, international travel restrictions and a COVID-19 vaccination requirement.
The 2022 WSOP seemed like a good bet to get back on track, but recent volatility in cryptocurrency markets has cast some doubt. Crypto has high utility in online gambling circles, leaving some professionals hurting financially from its downturn over the past two months heading into the WSOP.
The smaller buy-in events (there are 21 tournaments scheduled with buy-ins of less than $1,000) shouldn’t be as affected, but the higher-priced ones (there are 28 tournaments scheduled with buy-ins of at least $10,000) could see a dip. On social media, some prominent players have predicted that peers might choose to pare down their schedule and pick their spots, rather than playing in every event possible.
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.
