Player of the Year

The top three players in the Card Player 2008 Player of the Year (POY) race had not been challenged since the World Series of Poker this summer. Leader John Phan was followed from afar by Erik Seidel and David Benyamine, and then there was everyone else. Players who won major tournaments had cracked the top 10, but not the elusive top three. That all changed on Sunday, Oct. 26, when Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier won the World Poker Tour Festa al Lago $15,000 no-limit hold'em championship and tallied 2,220 points. This gave Grospellier 5,410 points, which is good for second place on the leader board. Grospellier also took home $1,411,015 to take his 2008 tournament winnings to $3,628,910.

Grospellier began 2008 with a huge win, taking home $2 million for his victory at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, where he picked up 2,400 points to take an early POY lead. He went on to make three more final tables and cash five additional times before the WPT Festa al Lago event began, running his point total up to 3,190, and his big win at Bellagio put him in a position to challenge John Phan for the POY title. Keep in mind that Grospellier is still 1,294 points behind Phan.

Another familiar face in POY races jumped into the top five when defending champion David "The Dragon" Pham finished in second place in a $5,000 no-limit hold'em preliminary event at the Festa al Lago. Pham won $116,100 and 440 points, taking his totals up to $1,060,739 and 4,022 points, putting him in fifth place.

The final tables of the WPT Festa al Lago and the North American Poker Championship were also responsible for thrusting three well-known players into the top 20.

Nam Le has been a consistent performer all year, and his runner-up finish at Bellagio took him to 15th place in the standings with 3,425 points. Le has cashed 11 times in 2008, making three final tables and winning $1,428,696. This was his biggest cash and point score of the year, topping his fourth-place finish at the WPT L.A. Poker Classic and his victory in the Asian Poker Tour high-rollers event in Macau. This is also familiar territory for Le, who finished in 15th place in 2007 with 3,177 points and second in 2006 with 5,215 points.

Nenad Medic has cashed only four times in 2008, but when he does, he makes them count. His first major win of the year came at the WSOP, where he claimed the first gold bracelet of the summer when he won the $10,000 pot-limit hold'em championship. He took home $794,112 for that win, along with 2,100 points. His fourth-place finish at the Festa al Lago gave him another 1,110 points and $373,010, taking his totals up to 3,210 points and $1,167,122. That is good enough to put Medic in 17th place in a POY race that promises to be exciting until the conclusion of the WPT Five-Diamond World Poker Classic in December.

Kathy Liebert collected $277,684 and 1,600 points for finishing in third place at the NAPC, which gave her 3,054 for the year and put her in 24th place on the leader board. She then continued to inch up the standings when she finished in third place in a $500 no-limit hold'em event at the Festa al Lago to take home $5,485 and 72 points. This was enough to put her total at 3,126 points, which is 20th place in the standings at press time.

Look Out: Allen Bari
By Ryan Lucchesi

Allen Bari has cashed in poker tournaments 16 times in 2008 and has won $701,992 in prize money, while accumulating 3,110 Player of the Year (POY) points. From 2004 to 2007, Bari cashed in just five events, but he was let go from his 9-to-5 job in November 2007 and focused his attention on poker. The career move has been a good one for him thus far, and he currently sits in 23rd place in the POY standings.

His biggest win came in the Borgata Summer Open in June, where he defeated Vinny Pahuja heads up in the $5,000 no-limit hold'em championship to take home $500,250 and 1,680 POY points. Bari also cashed in two events at the World Series of Poker, but most of his success has come in preliminary events at World Poker Tour stops on the schedule. "I think everyone should be playing the prelims, because you can play only so many $10,000 events," he said. "There would be just too much variance. You can't always play against just the best. I want to play against the best, but I'm doing this to make money."

Bari began playing poker at the cash-game tables in Atlantic City, but he soon discovered tournament poker and further sharpened his game online. "I started out playing live. I was playing a lot of cash games in Atlantic City, and then I started playing a lot online just because the players online are a lot better, and they actually improved my game. I'm more of a hybrid than anything else," said Bari. When asked about what has made his game so consistently effective, Bari offered this reply: "I've been playing for seven years, so I'm pretty good at reading people. I know when to make really thin value-bets, and for the most part I can sense when people are weak. I know when people think that I'm playing lots of hands, so it definitely does get me a lot more action than most people. I mean, if I were an old guy, I wouldn't be getting as much action as I do."