As we move into poker's busy summer season, the
Card Player Player of the Year (POY) race is getting more and more exciting with each event. The award is now in its 10th year, and we already have a great race.
First off, congratulations to the current man atop the leader board: J.C. Tran. J.C. is having another monster year, and after beating out 474 players at the
World Poker Tour's World Poker Challenge, he can finally call himself a
WPT champion. In the past four months, he's banked another $2 million in winnings, keeping up the torrid pace that netted him 10 final tables and third place in the final 2006 POY standings.
If anyone wanted proof of whether or not our European friends know how to host huge poker tournaments, he only had to look at the
European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo, which wrapped up in early April. More than 700 players ponied up the €10,000 ($13,000) buy-in, making this the largest field in a tourney held outside the United States.
Gavin Griffin, who made history back in 2004 when he became the youngest person ever to win a
World Series of Poker bracelet ($3,000 pot-limit hold'em), again stepped onto center stage in Monte Carlo. Gavin finished first, pocketed the largest first-place prize in
EPT history, just over $2.4 million, and rocketed up to third place in the POY standings.
Hats off to PokerStars for putting its marketing muscle behind this event. The site qualified 246 of the 706 who headed to Monte Carlo, and, amazingly, 16 of the final 32 players were PokerStars qualifers and four fought all the way to the final table. Griffin, the champion, also qualifed on the site. Showing that poker and philanthropy do go hand and hand, Griffin pledged a portion of his winnings to a breast cancer charity walk, and PokerStars kicked in an additional $15,000 and announced that it would match all donations from other PokerStars players 100 percent.
Another player in the midst of the POY race is Marc Karam. Marc now sits in fourth place after finishing second in the
EPT championship, which was good for $1.4 million. The Ottawa, Canada, native pulled off a back-to-back feat in Monte Carlo, as he made the final table of the
EPT championship event in 2006, also. Karam has crushed the fields at two other recent international events, making the final table at this year's
Aussie Millions event and the
WPT's first event in Canada, held last October, the
North American Poker Championship. He is a player to put on your radar.
Another name familiar to the POY race is David "The Dragon" Pham. With nearly $4.7 million in lifetime tournament winnings, Pham won the
Card Player Player of the Year title in 2001 and nearly pulled off a repeat in 2004. He's playing excellent poker, and now sits in the No. 5 spot with his recent third-place finish at the
World Poker Challenge, which was good for just over $182,000, and two first-place finishes at
Winnin' o' the Green events in March. Pham is a dangerous player, and if he continues to run hot, watch out.
James Van Alstyne, Bill Edler, Ted Forrest, John Hennigan, and rising star Juan Carlos Alvarado also sit atop the leader board, making 2007 yet another exciting race.
By the time you read this, the
Five-Star World Poker Classic WPT Championship will be under way. There will be lots of movement on the leader boards, and you can stay up to date by keeping your browser locked on CardPlayer.com for updates on all tournaments.
