When it comes to the PokerGO Tour, everyone knows the big events. The PokerGO Cup, the U.S. Poker Open, and the Poker Masters are the first tournaments that come to mind. But many do not realize that almost a quarter of the qualifying tournaments for the PGT come from one event – the World Series of Poker, which will provide 31 qualifying events towards the 2026 PGT Player of the Year race.
All World Championship Events Count
The PGT, which recognizes tournaments with a buy-in of at least $10,000 and/or “High Roller” events around the world, will liberally draw from the 2026 WSOP schedule. 31 tournaments that will take place over the upcoming summertime festival in Las Vegas will be counted for the PGT Player of the Year race and for the PGT Championship Freeroll, which will take place in January 2027. This will have a sizeable effect on the PGT standings by the end of August.
The major WSOP events will begin on May 29, just days after the WSOP starts on May 26. The $25,000 No Limit Hold’em Heads-Up World Championship, Event #7 on the WSOP schedule, will be contested over two days at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas, which will feature a twist not normally seen in a heads-up event. 64 players will start on May 27, and those eliminated that day have the option to come back for a second chance (another 64 players) on May 30. After that, the tournament will play until the champion is crowned.
All world championship tournaments across the different disciplines of poker will be part of the WSOP schedule and will also count toward the PGT. These tournaments include $10,000 events in Omaha Hi/Lo, No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Single Draw, Seven Card Stud, a Dealer’s Choice event, and the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship, otherwise known as “The Main Event.” Several $25,000 tournaments are also included in both six- and eight-handed formats, and $50,000 and $100,000 High Roller tournaments will be in the mix.
WSOP Shapes the PGT Standings
It is not difficult to see that the World Series of Poker, through the sheer multitude of tournaments it offers, has a massive impact on the overall PGT standings.
Last year, Michael Mizrachi dominated on his way to winning the World Championship. That singular event pushed Mizrachi to #4 in the overall standings for the 2025 PokerGO Tour Player of the Year race, even though he only had one other win (which was the $50,000 Poker Players’ Championship at the WSOP) and two cashes that were tabulated. In comparison, the top three finishers on the PGT POY in 2025 – eventual POY Alex Foxen, runner-up Sam Soverel, and third-place finisher David ‘Chino’ Rheem – earned 27, 31, and 35 cashes, respectively, on the PGT, but only garnered a couple hundred more points than Mizrachi for his limited work.
With 31 WSOP tournaments on the schedule that will earn PGT points, this raises a great deal of concern among those currently at the top of the leaderboard. Brock Wilson has had a tremendous start to 2026 – ten cashes and four wins – to lead the way, but going into a cold streak for the WSOP could result in him not even being ON the leaderboard come the end of August. Qinghai Pan, Yuri Dzivielevski, Michael Beck, and Andrew Lichtenberger, who currently make up the Top Five, also could be knocked off should they go on a dry spell at the WSOP.
There are also costs involved in chasing history on the PGT. Those 31 tournaments that make up the WSOP events that count on the PGT would cost almost $1 million ($970,000, to be exact) in buy-ins, making it nearly impossible for a player to participate in every event. Out of the current Top Five on the PGT leaderboard for 2026, only Pan ($1,086,810) and Dzivielevski ($2,045,350) have made more than that before the start of the 2026 WSOP.
According to the late Lou Krieger, “Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring or hard and impersonal. It is fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just.” It would appear that the PGT is trying to price out the “unwashed masses” players, making that microcosm that Krieger spoke so eloquently about an oligarchy of those who have the money to make the rules and battle for the big money. By adopting a quarter of its tournaments from the WSOP, the PokerGO Tour does not seem to care about the backs the game was built on.