Ahead of the start of the $10,000 Championship Event – the “Main Event” of the World Series of Poker – the lineup on the Player of the Year race has completely shuffled. Shaun Deeb, who was near the top just a couple of weeks ago in his pursuit of repeating as POY, is now mired deep in the pack. There is a whole new cast of characters who have taken over the lead of the WSOP POY, with Alex Foxen heading a tight pack that includes Josh Arieh, Nick Schulman, and 2026 Poker Players’ Championship winner Benny Glaser in pursuit.
Spurred By Wife’s Success?
On June 8, Kristen Foxen was able to defeat a highly difficult final table to earn her sixth WSOP bracelet in the $25,000 No Limit Hold’em High Roller tournament. That seemed to spark Alex a bit, with three bracelets of his own, as he would come out on June 14 and storm to the title of the Super Turbo bounty and win his fourth piece of jewelry. While Kristen brought in the big bucks with her High Roller win, Alex has been the one consistently cashing at the WSOP, with five final table finishes and eight total cashes to this point. Those points, all earned at the Las Vegas version of the WSOP, have pushed him to the top of the heap in the race for the WSOP POY, with 2,721 points.
Schulman, who hasn’t been on the WSOP YouTube broadcasts as much as people might like, has been busy making his own runs at history. He picked up his eighth WSOP bracelet, winning Event #37, the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. tournament, and has earned eight cashes of his own over the first month of the Series. Schulman nearly made it two bracelets for 2026 by finishing as the runner-up in the Deuce to Seven Triple Draw Lowball World Championship (to Japan’s Koji Fujimoto), but the points earned in that tournament pushed him into second place in the POY race with 2,550 points.
Arieh rounds out the podium spots at this mark in the WSOP. Although he has not yet earned a bracelet in 2026, his runner-up finish in the PPC and the $10K H.O.R.S.E. World Championship have garnered him some big points. Along with a deep run at the WSOP Europe Main Event back in April (44th-place finish), Arieh’s total points are nipping at the heels of Schulman’s.
With just a few days until the beginning of the 2026 WSOP Main Event, here is how the POY contenders line up:
1. Alex Foxen, 2,721 points
2. Nick Schulman, 2,550
3. Josh Arieh, 2,524
4. Benny Glaser, 2,480
5. Josh Reichard, 2,385
6. Eelis Paerssinen, 2,313*
7. Naoya Kihara, 2,299*
8. Martin Zamani, 2,210
9. Shaun Deeb, 2,058
10. Justin Liberto, 1,951
(* – 2026 WSOP double bracelet winners)
Las Vegas Not the Close of the Fight
You might have noticed that, in a couple of places, we listed a few players and their finishes at the WSOP Europe. That is because, in this year’s WSOP POY race, all three locations will be taken into consideration. The WSOP Europe, which was completed in April, the currently running WSOP Las Vegas, and the December festivities surrounding the WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas, will all be counted toward the overall POY race, meaning that someone who is in contention for the POY after the conclusion of the WSOP Main Event final table in August will have to set aside some time to head for the Bahamas in December (yeah, tough life, huh?).
With major $10K tournaments earning the victors over 1,000 points per effort – and with the number of high-dollar tournaments at the WSOP Paradise – it can be expected that ANYONE within shouting distance of the top of the POY heap will want to be in the Bahamas for action. A 1,000-point finish would move anyone in the Top 100 into the upper echelons of the POY leaderboard, and some other deep finishes in tournaments can earn the player a nice prize.
The top three finishers in the WSOP POY race will take the major awards. The first-place finisher will naturally be crowned the 2026 Player of the Year and earn a $100,000 prize package for the 2027 WSOP Paradise. The second- and third-place finishers will have to settle for just getting the $100K Paradise package, while the Top 15 will pick up an entry into the $30,000 Super Main Event in the Bahamas. Just like a couple of weeks ago, this list could completely shift again by the time we reach the end of the WSOP’s run in Las Vegas.
