There are new players at the top of both leaderboards at the World Series of Poker as we return with our Week Six rundown. Josh Arieh's continued November surge has pushed him to the top of the WSOP's Player of the Year standings. In the No-Limits VELO race, Cole Ferraro's win in Event 61, $600 Deepstack Championship No-Limit Hold'em has moved him in front of a well-shuffled chasing pack.
Both the POY and VELO races offer $25,000 each in bonus prize money, split among each leaderboard's top three finishers. Both also include the bragging rights, especially the long-running WSOP POY race.
Arieh's hot November pushes him to POY lead
A torrid mid-series stretch for Arieh continues, including a solid 441st-place Main Event run. Arieh had endured a 16-year bracelet drought before capturing two events earlier in the series. The second of those, in Event #66: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship (8-Handed), had left him just shy of then-leader Jake Schwartz's lead.
Since then, though, Arieh has tacked on more solid results. Besides his Main Event payday, he's added another final table, this time in Online Event #7: $3,200 WSOP.com No-Limit Hold'em High Roller 8 Max. Arieh placed fourth in the online championship for $96,049 in what was his fourth final table of the series, all in the past three weeks.
After going on a multi-event heater after enduring such a long bracelet drought, Arieh was in the mood for a bit of a well-earned (if tongue in cheek) boast:
Arieh's current 3,278.43 point total has him more than 460 points ahead of second-place Schwartz while opening up the largest lead in the POY race since the series' opening days. It also derails, at least temporarily, Schwartz's chances of capturing the POY without logging a single bracelet win of his own.
WSOP Player of the Year (POY) standings through November 12:
- Josh Arieh - 3,278.43
- Jake Schwartz - 2,816.45
- Anthony Zinno - 2,731.32
- Kevin Gerhart - 2,726.99
- Ryan Leng - 2,684.04
- Tommy Le - 2,618.21
- Ben Yu - 2,612.19
- Shaun Deeb - 2,611.07
- Phil Hellmuth - 2,598.59
- Dylan Linde - 2,518.97
Ferraro clings to lead in VELO chase
Over in the No-Limits VELO leaderboard race, which includes only open events with a no-limit format, Ferraro continues to lead in a slowly tightening battle. Early VELO leader Daniel Lazrus hasn't been able to add any cashes in the past two weeks, leaving room for Ferraro and four other players to leapfrog him in the chase.
Ferraro holds over a 200-point edge at the moment with his 2,023.64 total. Pete Chen and Ben Yu, also bracelet winners this series, have edged over the 1,800-point mark. Three more players have topped the 1,700-point plateau -- Georgios Sotiropoulos, Carlos Chang, and Lazrus.
Both the POY and VELO boards have spread out some, but with more than 1,000 points being awarded to the winner in most points-eligible events, both chases remain wide open with less than two weeks remaining in the series. Here are the top 10 in the No-Limits VELO chase:
No-Limits VELO standings through November 12:
- Cole Ferraro - 2,032.64
- Pete Chen - 1,826.68
- Ben Yu - 1,810.85
- Georgios Sotiropoulos - 1,779.10
- Carlos Chang - 1,768.18
- Daniel Lazrus - 1,721.70
- Jason Koon - 1,667.26
- Scott Ball - 1,630.85
- Ran Ilani - 1,599.13
- Ren Lin - 1,586.60
Featured image source: Haley Hintze
