Player of the Year

Foxwoods Lifts Two Tournament Professionals Into Player of the Year Race

The 2009 Foxwoods Poker Classic marked the first time that a World Poker Tour event hosted at the massive casino failed to pay at least $1 million in prize money to the winner. The tournament attracted 259 players, creating a prize pool of $2,436,930. The top prize up for grabs was $731,079, and that went to the eventual champion, Vadim Trincher, who won his first major tournament title. Trincher has been a grinder on the tournament trail for a couple of years now, and had cashed four times on the WPT and six times at the World Series of Poker prior to his win at Foxwoods. He was awarded 1,560 Player of the Year (POY) points for the victory. This gives him 1,788 for 2009, thanks to a prior final-table appearance in a preliminary event at the L.A. Poker Classic. He finished in fourth place in a $2,000 no-limit hold’em event at the LAPC to take home $29,178 and 228 points. He now sits in 16th place on the POY leader board.

Amnon Filippi finished second at Foxwoods, and won $409,405 in prize money and 1,300 points. This was the fifth cash of 2009 for Filippi, who also made his second final-table appearance of season seven on the WPT. He made the final table of the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic in December 2008, where he finished in fifth place. Filippi has a total of 1,567 points in 2009, which is good for 23rd place. He made his first final table of the year in the L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. event, where he finished seventh for 150 points, and he also finished 12th in the Bay 101 Shooting Star championship event to add another 117 points to his total. Filippi has been playing some of the best poker of anyone in the world during the last six months, and a major tournament win would thrust him into the top spot on the leader board.

Full Body of Work: Mike Leah

Mike Leah has cashed nine times thus far in 2009. He has made three final tables, winning one of them for the largest payday of his career. He has accumulated 1,920 POY points during this time, which puts him in a five-way tie for 10th place in the standings. While each player with whom Leah is tied has earned his points with a single win, Leah has built his resume piece by piece. He began the year by cashing twice in preliminary events at both the Borgata Winter Open and the WSOP Circuit event at Harrah’s Tunica. He garnered his first POY points of the year, 240, when he finished in sixth place in the Circuit championship event in Tunica.

Leah then moved on to the L.A. Poker Classic, where he cashed in his fifth no-limit hold’em preliminary event of the year before making his second final table in a $5,000 no-limit hold’em preliminary. He finished second in that event to Hevad Khan, and won 720 points on his first six-figure payday. He then went to the WSOP Circuit event at Caesars Atlantic City in March, and just missed making his second Circuit event championship final table when he finished in 12th place. He chalked up his next tournament cash in Atlantic City, as well, when he captured the fifth win of his career in the Borgata $500,000 Deep Stack no-limit hold’em tournament. He emerged from a field of 919 players to claim the first-place prize of $319,536, the largest win of his career, and 960 POY points.

Shaun ‘tedsfishfry’ Deeb Leads Online Player of the Year Race
By Julio Rodriguez

A little more than one-third of the year is in the books and a few notable players have begun to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. Perhaps the ultimate online grinder, Shaun “tedsfishfry” Deeb is set firmly atop the Card Player Online Player of the Year (OPOY) standings, thanks to one of the longest hot streaks in online poker history. Since January, Deeb has made 15 OPOY-qualifying final tables and won an amazing nine of them. The high-volume player has already earned more than $500,000 this year.

Last year’s second-place OPOY finisher Steve “gboro780” Gross is once again sitting in second place, but with a big difference. In 2008, Gross put together a runner-up campaign without ever cashing for six figures or taking down a major tournament. This year, however, he already has made three six-figure scores and has racked up a total of $701,505 in winnings, just $40,000 shy of what he made all of last year.

Britain’s own Chris “Moorman1” Moorman is in third place. Moorman has made 17 final tables on the year, and has taken down three of them. The daily rebuy events are his specialty, but he recently made the final table of the main event of the Spring Championship of Online Poker to pick up his first six-figure score of the year, $112,950. In total, Moorman has won more than $482,000 in the past four months alone.

You can follow the OPOY race all year long at CardPlayer.com.

Look Out: Mohsin Charania

Mohsin Charania has become a familiar fixture at live poker tournaments, in addition to being an online star. He has cashed five times in live tournaments since he first cashed at The Venetian’s Deep-Stack Extavaganza III back in June 2008, with the bulk of his live success coming on the World Poker Tour. He finished in 26th place at the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic last December, followed that up by placing 15th in the Southern Poker Championship in January, and most recently cashed in 27th place at the Bay 101 Shooting Star event in March. He now has $92,256 in live-tournament winnings, but that tells only a small part of the story.

Charania also plays online as “chicagocards1,” and his lifetime online-tournament winnings total $801,000. He has begun 2009 on a hot streak in online tournaments, where he has won $259,733. He is currently in seventh place on the Card Player Online Player of the Year (OPOY) leader board. He recently commented on his chances in the OPOY race: “It’s probably something I want to make a run for, because if I can win a SCOOP Spring Championship of Online Poker event, it will give me a really good shot at getting back into the top three, and then there’s an FTOPS Full Tilt Online Poker Series event coming up. I’m definitely going to try to focus more on live tournaments, with the Bellagio, Monte Carlo, and World Series coming up this summer, but if I go on a good SCOOP run and a good FTOPS run, I think I’ll have a chance.”

His largest cash online this year came in the Ultimate Bet Online Championship, where he finished sixth out of a field of 1,115 players in a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event, which was good for $48,502 in prize money and 480 OPOY points. His largest points win came when he placed third in the The Sunday Brawl on Full Tilt Poker, a $240 no-limit hold’em bounty tournament that drew 2,109 players; he took home 640 OPOY points and $41,336 in prize money. Whether he is playing live or online, Charania has proven that he is a consistent winner who is not afraid to gamble. Look for him to make a final-table appearance at a major tournament in the near future, and be sure to track his progress in the OPOY race online at CardPlayer.com.