Matakis Takes Halfway Mark Lead in WSOP POY Race
The World Series of Poker just passed the halfway mark of its 95-event live tournament series in Las Vegas. It’s time to look at a Player of the Year race that has become tighter and more interesting than most anticipated.
It is important to note the events that qualify for 2023 WSOP Player of the Year points. Most of the live events played at the Paris and Horseshoe casinos on the Las Vegas Strip count, with a few exemptions of tournaments that restrict entries. The online poker bracelets awarded on WSOP-dot-com count, but only the ones that include players in the Nevada and New Jersey player pool. It’s easier to list the exclusions:
-WSOP online bracelet events in Michigan
-WSOP online bracelet events in Pennsylvania
-WSOP Europe later this year
-Any WSOP online bracelets outside of the May 30 – July 18 timeline
-Live event 1 ($500 Casino Employees NLHE)
-Live event 4 (Tournament of Champions invitational freeroll)
-Live event 48 ($1K Seniors NLHE)
-Live event 51 ($1K Tag Team NLHE)
-Live event 61 ($1K Super Seniors NLHE)
-Live event 67 ($1K/$10K Ladies NLHE)
Who is Ian Matakis?
He is the points leader in the 2023 WSOP POY race at the halfway mark of the summer series.
But who is he?
Some might know Minnesota’s Ian Matakis from small tournaments at Canterbury Park or Running Aces, where he first started racking up tournament wins and cashes in 2016. His buy-ins went from $50 to $250 and higher as he progressed in the years that followed. He began to play in events on the Mid-States Poker Tour but began to show cashes outside of his local cardrooms in 2019.
In 2019, he cashed in several WSOP events in Las Vegas and finished second in a Venetian DeepStack Championship event. During the pandemic, he put in the work and played WSOP’s online bracelet events on GGPoker, cashing in several of those. He played even more WSOP events online in 2021 and 2022, adding in some live ones in 2022 in Las Vegas as well.
This year, he’s hitting his stride. These are his results from this summer’s live and online WSOP events alone:
-Event 1 (online) $333 NLHE Triple Treys = 30th place ($2,285)
-Event 12 (live) $5K NLHE Freezeout = 99th place ($8,011)
-Event 2 (online) $500 NLHE Bankroll Builder = 1st place ($120,686)
-Event 13 (live) $600 PLO Deepstack = 93rd place ($2,051)
-Event 4 (online) $600 NLHE Ultra Deepstack = 5th place ($38,184)
-Event 15 (live) $1,500 NLHE 6-Handed = 9th place ($47,788)
-Event 21 (live) $1K PLO = 282nd place ($1,602)
-Event 32 (live) $3K NLHE 6-Handed = 15th place ($30,429)
-Event 37 (live) $2K NLHE = 78th place ($6,805)
-Event 7 (online) $500 PLO 8-Max = 17th place ($3,332)
-Event 46 (live) $500 NLHE Freezeout = 199th place ($1,821)
-Event 49 (live) $1K NHLE Super Bounty = 128th palce ($2,213)
That’s who he is.
Top 10 POY at Halfway Point
Matakis is dominating the points leaderboard for the Player of the Year race so far, with Shaun Deeb in third and early points leader Chad Eveslage in fifth. Here are the standings at the halfway mark of the 2023 WSOP:
-1. Ian Matakis 2,914.73
-2. Michael Rodrigues Pires Santos 2,429.26
-3. Shaun Deeb 2,368.97
-4. Christopher Brewer 2,300.38
-5. Chad Eveslage 2,217.92
-6. Josh Arieh 2,173.70
-7. Michael Moncek 2,151.16
-8. Jans Arends 1,999.18
-9. Tyler Brown 1,946.11
-10. Chance Kornuth 1,933.38
Many more in the top 25 could catapult up the leaderboard. Some big names are there, such as David Baker in 13th, Nick Schulman in 14th, Brian Yoon in 18th, Ben Lamb in 21st, and Jerry Wong in 25th.
Truthfully, it is almost anyone’s game at this point. A bracelet or several deep runs could change the game. And no pressure on Matakis, but he certainly won’t be able to skate through to become the Player of the Year without a fight.
The list is updated with some frequency. Players can also tally their own points with the points calculator on this page of the WSOP website.
WSOP Player Stats
The WSOP does track the results of the summer series in a number of different categories.
Some categories are obvious.
The player with the most bracelets this year is Chad Eveslage, as he won two Dealers Choice events in a row (Events 5 and 10) early in the series.
The player with the most earnings is Chris Brewer, who won the $250K Super High Roller for $5.3M. Add in a couple other deep runs, including a third-place finish in the $25K Heads-Up Championship, and he shows more than $5.6M in earnings this summer so far.
The highest number of cashes is an interesting list:
-1. Michael Holtz (13)
-2. Ian Matakis (12)
-3-6. Jake Schwartz, Koray Aldemir, Josh Arieh, Jim Collopy (11 each)
-7-13. Jeff Madsen, Ben Yu, Ivan Starostin, Alfred Atamian, Ari Engel, Yuval Bronshtein, Aaron Kupin (10 each)
-14-17. Shawn Buchanan, Shaun Deeb, Scott Bohlman, Christopher Battenfield (9 each)
Women at the WSOP are finishing as per usual, with six making final tables through the first half of the World Series. Female participation increases, typically, as the series moves forward.
The problem with the statistics on the WSOP website is that they are wrong. Harley Brooks, who is a man, is shown in the women’s category, having won a bracelet and being in the top five of women’s earnings. That’s problematic. It is unclear if there are any other misclassifications.
What is clear is that Kristen Foxen leads the earnings category, and the first four names on the list are women:
-1. Kristen Foxen $436,639
-2. Sarah Herzali $207,720
-3. Tracy Nguyen $171,389
-4. JJ Liu $143,067
And with regard to cashes, Loni Harwood leads the way:
-1. Loni Harwood (6)
-2. Kristen Foxen (5)
-3. Angela Jordison, Lindsay Kido, Kathy Liebert, Esther Taylor-Brady, Cherish Andrews, Lexy Gavin (4 each)
