2016 Card Player Player of the Year -- Sam Soverel and Gordon Vayo Climb

Two massive poker tournaments wrapped up this week, with both events thoroughly shaking up the top twenty in the 2016 Card Player Player of the Year race standings. Here is a look at the events that most impacted the leaderboard this week:

Aria Super High Roller 12

A total of 34 entries were made in the 2016 Aria Super High Roller 12 $100,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event, building a prize pool of $3,332,000.

In the end Sam Soverel came out on top, capturing his third title of 2016 and the first-place prize of $1,024,364. The high-stakes cash game player has now made a total of 10 final tables this year, cashing for $2,468,886 in live poker tournaments along the way. His other two titles this year include his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet, which he won in a $1,000 pot-limit Omaha event, and a win in a $25,000 high roller event held at Aria in January.

Soverel earned 600 Player of the Year points for this latest huge score. With 4,765 points to his name he has climbed into fourth place in the POY standings.

Current POY race leader Fedor Holz finished fourth in this event for $299,880 and 300 points. He now has 7,058 POY points, the most any player has accumulated in the past decade. With 15 final table finishes and six titles in 2016 Holz has cashed for $16,288,714 so far this year, with just over two months left to play.

With Holz’s elimination in fourth place the remaining three players decided to make a deal based on the current chip counts, with Jake Schindler being awarded $835,956 as the third-place finisher and Brian Rast getting $971,880 as the runner up. This was Schindler’s 11th final table. He moved into 17th place in the rankings as a result.

2016 World Series of Poker Main Event

The 2016 World Series of Poker $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event drew 6,737 entries, the largest turnout for poker’s biggest tournament in the past five years and as a result this year’s prize pool swelled to $63,327,800.

In the end Las Vegas local Qui Nguyen emerged victorious as this year’s world champion, earning the gold bracelet, the $8,005,310 first-place prize and 3,300 POY points, the largest amount of points awarded in any one event throughout the year. This was his lone tournament cash this year, but it was enough to propel him to 22nd on the leaderboard.

Nguyen defeated poker pro Gordon Vayo heads-up. Vayo earned $4,661,228 and 2,750 points at his second final table of the year. After having made the November Nine Vayo played the $2,5000 buy-in main event of the River Poker Series at the WinStar Casinos in Oklahoma and came out on top of a field of 1,054 to win $587,120 and 1,440 points.

With these two huge final table scores Vayo has shot up the rankings and into eighth place, with 4,190 points and $5,248,348 in year-to-date earnings.

Third-place finisher Cliff Josephy earned $3,453,035 and 2,200 points at his first live tournament final table of the year. His deep run in this event was enough to see him climb to 67th place in the POY standings.

Here is a look at the current top 20 in the POY standings:

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