The chances of depriving Kassela of the title of WSOP Player of the Year are close to zero; since his closest rival, John Juanda is out of the Main Event, there are in effect only mathematical odds to beat him.
Kassela won two events ($2,500 Seven Card Razz, $214,085 and $10.000$ Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8/b World Championship, $447,446), with the additional results of being 3rd in the $25.000 NLHE/6-Handed ($556.053), 10th in the $1.500 Limit Hold’em ($11.027) and 36th in the $2.500 Mixed Event ($5.376), worth a total of 285 points, 60 points over Juanda.
Winning the WSOP Main Event means 100 points in the competition for the POY title, thus four players have mathematical chances to overcome Kassela: Vladimir Shchemelev (210 pts), Dan Heimiller (205 pts), Michael Mizrachi (190 pts), James Dempsey (185 pts). Having said that, in these cases the respective participants must win the Main Event, with Kassela finishing 10th or even lower, not to mention some other conditions.
All in all, he has a definite advantage over his opponents and is expected to acquire the title, to which names are related like that of Daniel Negreanu (2004), Allen Cunningham (2005), Jeff Madsen (2006), Tom Schneider (2007), Erick Lindgren (2008) and Jeff Lisandro (2009).
