The 2025 WSOP Hits the Halfway Point
Benny Glaser, Scott Bohlman, Viktor Blom, Jonathan Little, and João Vieira have all had big moments so far, while poker's "most hated poker player in the world" has made headlines of his own.
It might not feel like it, but with the conclusion of the $10,000 Razz Championship on Thursday afternoon, the 2025 World Series of Poker has reached the halfway point. It provides a good opportunity to check in with how things are going both on the felt and off.
Scott Bohlman Leads Player of the Year Race
Benny Glaser jumped to the top of the early Player of the Year race standings after winning a pair of WSOP bracelets in the first 15 events on the schedule, but Scott Bohlman has combined a win in the $2,000 No Limit Hold’em event with seven other cashes, including a pair of final tables, to sit atop the POY race.
Shaun Deeb is once again putting up solid POY numbers and is the top-ranked player who hasn’t won a bracelet yet this summer. Only Deeb and Viktor Blom are in the top 10 without having yet posed for a winner’s photo.
Current POY Standings (as of 6/19/25 - Noon ET)
Scott Bohlman - 2,397.19
Benny Glaser - 2,035.53
Caleb Firth - 2,021.1
Joao Vieira - 1,963.49
Philip Sterhneimer
Interesting Players Doing Interesting Things
At the beginning of the Series, we featured The Six Most Intriguing Players at the 2025 WSOP. Now that we’ve officially reached the halfway point we’re revisiting how each of them have fared to date. Of the six, only João Vieira has won a WSOP bracelet and only he and Blom are contenders for WSOP POY so far.
Scott Seiver (1 cash, $3,590 earnings)
This time last year, Scott Seiver had won two bracelets and was well on his way to winning POY. The first half of this WSOP has been different. He’s only cashed once, coming in 34th in the $1,500 Limit Hold’em event.
Bryce Yockey (5 cashes, $138,045 earnings)
Bryce Yockey has had one close call so far this summer, finishing sixth in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha 8-or-better event. He got down to the final two tables in the $10,000 Seven-card Stud Championship but hasn’t yet announced himself as a contender for POY. He doe
Yuri Dzivielevski (6 cashes, $88,204 earnings)
Picking up six cashes so far, Yuri Dzivielevski is actually ahead of the pace he had in 2024 when he picked up nine cashes in live WSOP events. He also had three final tables and a win in those nine cashes while this year he’s not gone as deep. He just picked up his best result so far, coming in 18th in the $10,000 Razz Championship.
Noel Rodriguez (3 cashes, $118,602 earnings)
Making a final table just three days into the WSOP showed promise of a big summer for Noel Rodriguez, but the fifth place finish in the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event makes up 91% of his earnings so far.
João Vieira (6 cashes, $2,950,238 earnings)
We said that 2025 might be the João Vieira Revenge Tour and the Portuguese poker pro is proving that prediction. He picked up four cashes, including making the final two tables of $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship and the $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em High Roller, before outlasting 102 other players in the $100,000 No-Limit Hold'em High Roller for his fourth career WSOP bracelet.
Viktor Blom (6 cashes, $901,869 earnings)
Last year was Viktor Blom’s WSOP breakout year and 2025 might just top it. Last year he had 10 cashes and three final tables. Through the first 50 events this year, Blom has six cashes with four final tables highlighted by his runner-up finish in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship - his best WSOP finish ever. It seems like only a matter of time before Blom breaks through and wins his first bracelet.
Field Sizes Flat Compared to 2024 - That’s a Good Sign
There was some discussion before the WSOP began that field sizes might drop this year thanks to the current American political climate and some unease over issues with players coming from outside of the United States. Anuj Arora at PokerFuse.com has crunched the numbers and it seems like any concerns may have been unfounded.
Arora has been tracking both attendance (total entries) and the overall prize pool. Through the first three weeks, attendance is up 1.41% and the total prize pool is down 0.5% with most of that coming from a single event. This bodes well for the Main Event which could once again break the 10,000-player mark and break the record set last year (10,112).
READ: WSOP 2025 Edges Out 2024 in Attendance Through Three Weeks, But Super High Roller Declined
WSOP Continues to Drop the Ball with Online Events
For as long as the WSOP has offered bracelet events online, players and fans have debated about the prestige of those bracelets compared to those won in live events. The WSOP has always maintained that a bracelet is a bracelet whether it’s won live in Las Vegas or Rozvadov or the Bahamas or online via WSOP.com or GGPoker.com.
It’s hard not to look at the way communication has been handled this year in regards to bracelet events on WSOP.com and wonder if they actually believe that. The first such example came from the $250 Mystery Bounty bracelet event that was canceled on Day 2 of the event after players were having connectivity issues. After the event was officially called off, players waited days to hear about how they would be compensated for the outage. (The eventual solution left some players frustrated as well.)
Last week, longtime grinder Jonathan Little, who has established a very loyal following over the years as a player and coach, won his first career WSOP bracelet. Little has $9.3 million in lifetime earnings according to The Hendon Mob, won two World Poker Tour titles, is a former WPT Player of the Year and yet it took WSOP organizers nearly a full week to officially acknowledge the accomplishment in any way and his WSOP profile has yet to be updated to include the victory.
While the WSOP has put additional resources into their social media efforts this year and have had great success with the WSOP+ app this year, there has been barely any effort to promote or celebrate the results of the online events in any meaningful way close to the way they handle live events.
Martin Kabrhel Continues to Poker’s Biggest Heel
Martin Kabrhel has made one final table and cashed four other times at the 2025 WSOP and yet he’s grabbing headlines once again. The Czech poker pro has made the most of the his time in the spotlight and has PokerNews, Poker.org, and even non-poker outlets Las Vegas Review-Journal and Deadspin writing about him. Doug Polk’s latest video gets into the antics and the character of Kabrhel.
Kabrhel kicked things off early, getting under the skin of players in the fifth event on the calendar. Things escalated this past week during the $250,000 High Roller and it led to Nick Schulman, who had already chirped at Kahrbel earlier in the Series, giving us what some have called THE moment of the WSOP so far:.
https://x.com/PokerGO/status/1934836675219497250
Clearly Schulman had heard just about enough from Kabrhel.