Poker Writer
Shaun Deeb won’t play the Main Event this year because he sees winning the title of Player of the Year as more important. Deeb took the lead in the 2025 WSOP Player of the Year race with a win and runner-up finish in consecutive events last week and says he’ll now focus on smaller tournaments to try to lock up his victory.
That means sitting out what is, for most players, the most hotly anticipated event of the year.
Deeb won his seventh bracelet in the $100,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller and followed that up immediately with a second-place finish in a $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em event. Those two results generated enough points to push Deeb ahead of center-of-attention Martin Kabrhel, who had only just taken the lead by winning the Mini Main Event earlier the same week.
That success led Deeb to take a rare Sunday afternoon off while others were playing Day 2 of the Main Event. By electing not to play, Deeb could sit back and relax while preparing his final push to be crowned the Player of the Year for this series.
It’s so weird have nothing to do at 430 during Wsop for the first time all summer
— shaun deeb (@shaundeeb) July 6, 2025
The Main Event allows late registration through part of Day 2, so why didn’t Deeb take the opportunity to jump in? He elaborated on the decision during a post-win interview on the PokerGO livestream.
Motivation For Skipping Main Event
Deeb has already won Player of the Year once before, in 2018. He told PokerGO his primary motivation each year since then has been to repeat that performance. He believes that means skipping the Main Event.
That approach seems to be the trend among players who feel they’ve got a shot. Last year’s winner, Scott Seiver, likewise skipped the Main Event in pursuit of his Player of the Year title.
There is no monetary award for winning the race, but it does cement the winner’s place in the series’ history. That includes a banner that will hang in the main tournament area at future series. Player of the Year titles also factor in heavily when a player is considered for other honors like induction into the Poker Hall of Fame.
Is Skipping the Main a Good Strategy?
Many players view the Main Event as a must-play due to its relatively soft field and the substantial amount of money available to win. That includes a top prize which has exceeded $10 million in each of the last three years.
A deep run is also worth a considerable number of Player of the Year points. However, the length of the tournament far exceeds that of any other event. It is such a long grind that even WSOP legend Phil Hellmuth threatened to skip it this year, though he ultimately changed his mind.
From the first starting flight until the crowning of the champion, the Main Event spans a full two weeks. Each day lasts at least 10 hours, and often over 12. Players must put in grueling days of work to make it deep into the money. In fact, it’s possible to play for three whole days without even cashing. Bubbling the event in that fashion would be catastrophic for Deeb’s Player of the Year chances when he could have used the same time to take stabs at other events that could just as easily lock up the title for him.
For much of WSOP history, the Main Event was the grand finale of the series. Starting in 2018, however, the WSOP began adding extra events during the later stages of the Main Event to provide opportunities for players who had busted out but were still staying in Las Vegas. A total of 13 post-Main Event tournaments were added that first year. This year, there are 19, as the schedule has expanded to 100 events for the first time.
Ten-Event Cap a Factor
The 2025 Player of the Year scoring rules add a wrinkle to this. Players can now only count their ten best results. That change is designed to prevent a repeat of Chris “Jesus” Ferguson’s controversial 2017 win, which he achieved by racking up as many minimum cashes as possible without winning any marquee events. Deeb already has 15 eligible cashes this year. Small results won’t add anything more to his total. Even a Main Event cash wouldn’t help, so he’d need a deep run, which is statistically unlikely even for a player of his caliber.
He’ll be gunning for final tables and wins, and might fancy his chances in events like this Wednesday’s $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller, with its hefty buy-in and small field.
2025 Player of the Year Race Will Be Down to the Wire
Deeb may be on top for now, but there are at least three other players who could overtake him with one more good result. Here’s how the top five are shaping up at the moment:
- Shaun Deeb – 4,283 pts.
- Benny Glaser – 3,609 pts.
- Scott Bohlman – 3,431 pts.
- Martin Kabrhel – 3,346 pts.
- Joao Vieira – 2,834 pts.
Update (07/08): Deeb’s lead is bigger than it appeared when this article was published, as WSOP had taken some time to update the scores. The table above has been updated to reflect the latest data.
Benny Glaser sits in second place with only five cashes. What’s astonishing there is that he’s tied for the record for bracelets in a single series, with three, but even that might not be enough. That’s mainly because those wins came in events with smallish fields.
Deeb currently leads Glaser by nearly 700 points. The fact that Glaser’s points come from just five events is significant, though, in that it means he’ll have an easier time increasing his total than the other contenders. He can count up to five more cashes at full value, while Deeb is at his ten-event cap already. Kabrhel also has room to count one more event, while Bohlman, like Deeb, is at the limit.
Unlike Deeb, however, Glaser is playing the Main Event. Getting through the first few days would preclude playing anything else in the meantime. A deep run could steal the title from Deeb, but that may be his only shot.
Deeb and Glaser are also both elite mixed game players, and there are some juicy-looking non-Hold’em events left to come. Those include 6-Handed Omaha, TORSE, and HORSE events. If Deeb can make the final table of one of those while Glaser is tied up in the Main, his strategy might look brilliant.
