7 Poker Superstars Whose WSOP Legend Could Grow This Summer

Winning a WSOP bracelet in any event is tough but beating the biggest and best players to gold in events such as the Poker Players Championship, the Super High Roller and High Roller events is a vast achievement. We’ve picked out seven of the world’s best who would add a landmark victory to their poker legacies with success in Las Vegas this summer.

1. Daniel Negreanu

Our only Canadian on the list is one of poker’s all-time greats. If there was a Mount Rushmore of Poker, Daniel Negreanu would likely be the first face carved into the Harvey Peak Granite. ‘DNegs’ is a bona fide World Series of Poker legend and has an impressive six gold bracelets, but amazingly, his recent success around the globe hasn’t featured a WSOP win. Without WSOP gold in almost a decade, Negreanu’s last bracelet on American soil was almost 15 years ago. That’s a conundrum ready to be solved this summer.

Negreanu is a key part of the WSOP, especially in recent years. His video diaries – featuring wife Amanda Negreanu and his many frenemies at the felt – skyrocket views as he battles each day in seemingly endless tournament days. Famously a huge Rocky fan, Negreanu’s training regime has become legendary… and has already begun.

Monday I start training for the WSOP May 30th which is a 7 week grind where I go “all in”

Here is a detailed look at my training plan:

1. Weightlifting 6 days a week
2. Walk 15k Steps a day
3. Eat 1800 calories
4. No screens 30 min after wake up or 30 min before sleep
5. Daily…

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) April 9, 2023

Win a seventh WSOP bracelet and Kid Poker fans will go crazy. It would elevate Negreanu to seventh position on the all-time WSOP board for multiple bracelet wins and further improve his tournament score on The Hendon Mob’s all-time Money List, on which he currently sits third with over $50m in live ranking event winnings.

2. Phil Ivey

Phil Ivey has slipped out of the all-time top 10 on The Hendon Mob, dropping to 11^th in recent months. The poker legend, whose comeback to the WSOP fold last year inspired many to tune into the action, will be a major threat in the high-ticket events this summer. Ivey’s nature is such that if there is a big cash game at Bobby’s Room, he could leave the WSOP Action behind, possibly mid-hand.

If he’s involved in a Short Deck event and the gold is on the line, it’s going to be very difficult to bet against Phil Ivey. Just one bracelet win for Ivey would take him clear from Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson, both of whom have 10 titles in their illustrious careers. If Ivey could win bracelet #11 in the summer, the only player he would trail is a fellow Phil…

3. Phil Hellmuth

… and that is Phil Hellmuth. Ivey – like everyone – is some way behind the current leader on that list. The Poker Brat has an incredible 16 WSOP bracelets, almost double the total of all his challengers. Only the trio just mentioned and both Johnny Moss and Erik Seidel – who have nine bracelets – are above half of Hellmuth’s total.

Such is Hellmuth’s dominance that it’s a surprise that he has only won one bracelet in the past four years but take into consideration the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that he came second last year and third to Jeremy Ausmus recently too and the picture is clear – Hellmuth is still a major threat once a tournament gets to the final table. It seems inevitable that the big man will be there or thereabouts again given the number of small-field WSOP events he plays, and if it gets to the final, his record is impressive enough to scare even the most confident of professionals. Nobody does it better than Hellmuth.

Largely flying under the radar in recent years, Erik Seidel has only claimed WSOP gold once in the past 16 years, and that was an online bracelet in 2021, when he won the Super MILLION$ High Roller NLHE Event for $977,842. That was some achievement, however, coming as it did after a final table featuring Thomas Muehloecker and Seidel’s heads-up opponent Francisco Benitez, who has since established himself as a high roller to fear.

Seidel’s previous WSOP record is so strong that it’s easy to forget how good his pedigree really is in Las Vegas. The Vegas-based New Yorker and former backgammon player has been a mainstay in the past 40 years of the game and with all nine of his bracelet wins coming in events priced between $1,500 and $10,000, is going to be a major threat this summer. If Seidel can score a victory, he will go into equal second place behind Hellmuth with the most recent bracelet win, perhaps finally garnering the respect his incredible poker career deserves.

5. Shaun Deeb

The implacable Shaun Deeb may be deep in the early levels of a weight loss bet, but he’s no stranger to chips at the WSOP and is shooting for his sixth WSOP crown this year. All of Deeb’s wins have come in the past eight years, meaning that since his first gold back in 2015, he’s won a bracelet every 19 months.

As well as conquering the poker world in terms of recent bracelets, Deeb has been in the running for WSOP Player of the Year on numerous occasions and will once again go into battle with old frenemy Daniel Negreanu in a bid to be the best at this year’s WSOP. If Deeb wins a WSOP bracelet and Kid Poker doesn’t, then Deeb will go level with Negreanu on six WSOP bracelets, all of them won more recently than those by his old foe.

Here’s how Shaun Deeb got on playing his latest heads-up game, on the undercard of High Stakes Duel on PokerGO.

7. Michael Addamo

The Australian poker sensation is perhaps recognised more for his stunning year between the summer of 2021 and 2022, when he won five million-plus scores on the tournament circuit. With overall winnings of $20.9 million, it would be easy to forget that Addamo has won four WSOP bracelets between 2018 and today. That’s an amazing record given the events he’s won, including the $100,000 High Roller and $50,000 High Roller, both of which he won within five weeks in 2021.

Addamo’s fearless poker game and impressive table image combine to make a player that no-one wants to face over the WSOP felt in Las Vegas. With a plethora of high roller events on the ticket this summer, Addamo could become the second most successful Antipodean player, behind only Jeff Lisandro on six bracelets. Win two bracelets and Addamo will be level in gold and well ahead on the millions he has won.

7. Anthony Zinno

It’s seldom the case that such a successful player can win multiple bracelets as well as World Poker Tour titles. There are many whose success is limited to one or the other format, but one man to bridge that gap is Anthony Zinno. With three WPT titles and four WSOP bracelets, all within the last decade, Zinno is a force to be reckoned with in stamina-sapping major multi-table tournaments (MTTs).

All four of Zinno’s former WSOP titles have been in non-Hold’em formats, which is interesting. Having won all three of his WPT Main Events in NLHE, Zinno’s success in mixed game in Las Vegas makes him a threat in any discipline. With a busy summer likely, Zinno has to be a red-hot favorite to add to his tally by July 18^th.

With so many great players likely to play a full schedule at this year’s World Series of Poker, whose WSOP legends will grow even more? The 2023 WSOP takes place between May 30 and July 18 this summer in Las Vegas and we’ll be there to see all the drama unfold.