A Look at the Up-and-Coming Players to Watch

With 95 WSOP events on the ticket this year, which players should you be looking at as potential winners who are not yet WSOP legends? We’ve picked seven WSOP rising stars to cheer on with supreme confidence that they can get the job done.

1. Lautaro Guerra Cabrerizo

This Spanish player specializes in mixed games and is sure to be a massive threat in Pot Limit Omaha variants at the World Series once the series gets under way. In the recent PokerGOTour PLO Series, Cabrerizo won three of the nine events staged, taking home an incredible $967,150 after buying into the three events he won for a collective $50,000.

That phenomenal return included wins in both PLO and in a PLO Bounty format, as well as winning the Main Event of the series, the $25,000-entry PLO Championship for the biggest score of his career – $518,750.

Cabrerizo is undoubtedly a massive threat in the mixed game events that pack the WSOP schedule for 2023, with 46 of the 95 bracelets on offer in a format other than No Limit Hold’em. Cabrerizo plays positive, attacking poker and has an unerring knack of making the latter stages of tournaments with regularity. We back him to win his first WSOP bracelet in Las Vegas this summer.

2. Cherish Andrews

Speaking of players in great form who look like a lock to win big at this year’s World Series of Poker, step forward the 4th Annual Global Poker Awards Female Player of the Year Cherish Andrews. She has enjoyed a thrilling year at the felt in 2022, winning a World Poker Tour event, a WSOP online bracelet and the lion’s share of her $1.5 million in career earnings at the live felt.

Andrews is both on the rise and already performing at an incredible level of consistency. Winning a $400 entry event at the Wynn just a few weeks ago, she shows no signs of resting on any laurels and she is perhaps even more comfortable the higher the buy-in. As recently as this week, she was unlucky to miss out on the final table of a U.S. Poker Open event, consistently making the right moves at the right times.

If you’ve an opinion on someone else being the best female player on the planet, we respect it, but we’re confident your belief might switch to ours in 2023. Cherish Andrews is at the top of her game, and could well be a threat in all the major events that take place between now and the end of the year.

3. Damjan Radanov

This Serbian living in Miami has been on the scene for some years now, and even won a WSOP Circuit Ring back in 2015. But his major title breakthrough has yet to come and in recent months, his high roller consistency leads us to think that this could be his year in Las Vegas.

The fact that Radanov has cashed in four high roller events already in 2023, coupled with the fact that all of them were in mixed game events means he could well be a threat in those small field big-ticket variant events. Radanov’s development is such that he almost feels like a new threat and despite not winning a ranking event for five years – and with no wins in ranking events over the $1,675 buy-in level – we think the Serbian’s time is coming.

4. Brock Wilson

While it might seem an easy choice to pick Brock Wilson, whose record in live poker events totals $6.5 million in winnings, Wilson hasn’t won a bracelet. We’re calling a change to that statistic over the course of eight weeks in Sin City, and for a number of reasons. Firstly, Wilson has a real affinity with the WSOP as a brand, although he is yet to win a bracelet. He’s won not one but two WSOP Circuit Rings and was unlucky to crash out in sixth place in the Six-Max NLHE Championship last year, getting it in good with ace-jack only to fall to the eventual winner Greg Jensen’s king-ten.

Those heartbreaks could well be forgotten this summer, because Wilson loves the WSOP and will play all the big entry events, even if he sells pieces online via a poker stake website. With $839,015 in World Series of Poker winnings to date, Wilson is surely going over the million mark this summer, with a bracelet win getting closer by the day.

5. Landon Tice

Our ‘left field’ pick is a unique player and one who may not decide to play as many WSOP events as others – online phenom Landon Tice. Since bagging Daniel Negreanu’s car from ‘Kid Poker’, Tice has really bought into the legacy mindset that so many former champions have embraced in the past.

Add in Tice’s ebullient personality and boundless energy and his success is not hard to see as inevitable. He’s a better bet for WSOP Online events than live tournaments, purely because he is likely to give himself more chances to win online where he has been so successful. Tice might roll the dice, but he’s still a great bet to come up with the goods.

6. Angela Jordison

This is no outside bet at all. Angela Jordison is not the reigning Global Poker Award winner for Breakout Player of the Year for nothing. Since converting from cash game reg to tournament traveller, Jordison has climbed up and up the rankings and cruised past a million in live tournament earnings in 2022.

Coming desperately close to her first WSOP bracelet last summer, Jordison had to settle for third place out of 2,663 entries in the $1,000 NLHE Freezeout Event #18, banking an incredible $151,544. Such is the brightness of Jordison’s star at this moment in time that she’s a lock to reach another final table and put in that position for gold again, we can’t see her losing out twice – she’s that good.

7. Alex Kulev

Alex Kulev’s rise to prominence in recent years has almost been expected, so consistent in his play. However, the Bulgarian who resides in Dublin has yet to win gold at the World Series in any kind of event – WSOP, Circuit or WSOP Online – despite racking up an impressive $738,230 in WSOP cashes.

Kulev has become a crusher in plenty of online games, with his record in the GGPoker Super MILLION$ just one example of how he’s mixing it with anyone and everyone these days. Kulev’s record in live tournaments is no less impressive, with big results in three different continents in three months so far in 2023.

Wins in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, EPT Paris and Triton Series Vietnam have confirmed Alex Kulev’s status as one to fear at the felt and having finished second in the 2021 The Closer WSOP event, we think he go one place further at some point this year.