Poker Leaderboard: Best Players Without A Bracelet

Best Players Without A WSOP Bracelet (By Career Earnings)

The World Series of Poker announced in November that they will be putting on a $10,000 buy-in WSOP main event, which will feature a hybrid online and live format. As a result, an 87th gold bracelet will be awarded this year, following the 85 handed out during the WSOP Online during the summer and the one earned by WSOP Global Casino Championship winner AJ Kelsall in September. That means that there will be one more chance for a number of the world’s best players to remove themselves from the dreaded ‘best without a bracelet’ list.

There are currently ten players with more than $20 million in recorded tournament earnings who have yet to win a WSOP bracelet event. Four of those players have more than $30 million in career scores, including Dan Smith, whose earnings of just shy of $37 million make him the winningest tournament player in the world without a title earned at the series. The three other players with more than $30 million in cashes are Jason Koon, Steve O’Dwyer, and Mikita Badziakouski.

Several highly accomplished players got the bracelet monkey off their back in 2020, including two-time World Poker Tour main event winner Alan Goehring, 2019 Super High Roller Bowl Bahamas champion Daniel Dvoress, and Connor Drinan, who had more than $11 million in prior tournament cashes to his name before finally winning a WSOP title in the last event of the summer series. Only time will tell if one of these players will be the last one standing when the 2020 main event is decided, or if they will all have to wait for 2021 for another chance to cross their name out.