With all of the preliminary tournaments now completed –or on the verge of completion—the 2011 World Series of Poker Player of the Year race is now pretty much set heading into the Main Event. Three players ended the 2011 WSOP with over 500 POY points, making it impossible for a player to win the WSOP Main Event and the Player of the Year award in the process –500 POY points will be awarded to the Main Event winner.

However, the POY race will also carry over to the World Series of Poker Europe, so by no means are the results set, and should any player with over 210 POY points at the moment make the final table of the Main Event we won’t know the 2011 WSOP Player of the Year until the completion of the final table in November!

Right now it appears likely that Phil Hellmuth will be able to put another Bullet on his resume as he holds a substantial lead in the POY race thanks to his three runner-up finishes in the 2011 WSOP, but there are still plenty of people within striking distance who would like nothing better than to make Phil the bridesmaid for the fourth time in 2011!

Here is a look at the current Top 10 in the 2011 WSOP POY standings:

1. Phil Hellmuth — 710.25

2. Ben Lamb — 659.05

3. Brian Rast — 550.00

4. Chris Moorman — 486.20

5. Bertrand Grospellier — 479.25

6. Samuel Stein — 416.13

7. Joe Ebanks — 410.25

8. Owais Ahmed — 408.03

9. Mikhail Lakhitov — 401.80

10. Jason Mercier — 385.33

Standings courtesy of wsop.com and bluffmagazine.com

Tags: Ahmed, Bertrand Grospellier, Bridesmaid, Chris Moorman, Current, Ebanks, Europe, Lamb, Mercier, phil hellmuth, Poker Player, Resume, Series Of Poker, Striking Distance, Verge, world series, World Series of Poker, World Series Of Poker Player Of The Year, WSOP Main Event, Wsop Player Of The Year

This entry was posted on Friday, July 8th, 2011 at 10:27 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.