Daily 3-Bet: POY Flap, Phila Hellmutha, #BraceletPunting

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Today in the 3-Bet we find some questions brewing over the WSOP POY, an international take on the Poker Brat and a unique WSOP phenomenon.

1) Negreanu 17th for POY?

As far as we can tell there’s never been a ‘universally loved’ formula to determine the WSOP Player of the Year (or any POY for that matter). Sometimes the complaint is favoring high buy-in events over big-field NL tourneys; sometimes it’s overvaluing wins over cashes (or vice-versa).

Daniel Negreanu 5932

Skeptical about new POY formula.

As with anything dealing with tournament poker, there’s no perfect approach that will likely appease everyone.

Last year’s WSOP POY, which was determined by the GPI formula, went to Jason Mercier who, with 11 cashes, 4 final tables and 2 bracelets, was as close to a universal pick as you can get.

This year, though, things are already looking a bit sideways - at least in the eyes of a few major pros.

Switching over to a new proprietary formula presented by King’s Casino, the current POY leader is Thomas Pomponio, the $1m winner of the 18,000-player Colossus — with no other cashes yet.

Daniel Negreanu, by contrast, who has 4 cashes including a 2nd & 3rd in $10k events and a 15th & 67th in $1.5Ks, is currently 17th - almost 100 points behind.

Inexact science, for sure. But something players are already talking about. Check the current POY rankings here. (Note: tweets from a couple of days ago. And by GPI formula DNegs would be 7th). 

The current WSOP POY leader has a Collosus min cash and two 4th’s, one a $500 buy in and the other a $300 online tournament.

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) June 12, 2022

2) Poker Brat = Poker Brat

As we found out yesterday at his WSOP book signing, Phil Hellmuth is pretty excited about the release of his new autobiography Poker Brat.

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Phila Hellmutha

Covering his early years in poker along alongside a ‘5,000 word chapter’ on his time with UltimateBet and how he ‘almost left his wife’ in 2015, it appears it hits on a pretty wide swath of both personal and professional territory.

We don’t know exactly how many languages it’ll be reprinted in but it looks like it’ll cover a pretty wide swath of geographical territory, too, as one fan already posted a screenshot of its Polish translation:

In Poland your book will be too! Yeah! pic.twitter.com/mLTccdvmWr

— Rafał Gładysz (@JD_poker) June 14, 2022

We’re not language experts but is that really how you translate Phil Hellmuth to Polish? But Poker Brat is just Poker Brat?

You learn something new every day. Order Poker Brat (in English) via Amazon here.

3) Everybody Was #BraceletPunting

Safe to say Jason Mercier’s 2017 WSOP isn’t going quite as swimmingly as 2016 so far (how could it, really) but he did come up with a new Hashtag that had Daniel Negreanu rolling:

HAHAHA best hashtag ever #BraceletPunting

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) June 14, 2022

Pretty sure Mercier isn’t the only poker pro who’s found himself in that situation as the summer grinds on. In Mercier’s case, though, he’s equally likely to be on three final tables next week, too.

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