Changing Face of the Player of the Year Race

If you look at the data, the Card Player 2009 Player of the Year (POY) race has undergone quite an interesting paradigm shift.

For the first time ever, more international players are among the top 10 than U.S. players. What was once a United States-centric race now resembles a World Cup soccer match.

We’re about three-fourths through the 2009 race, and only three players from the United States (Eric Baldwin, Brock Parker, and Cornel Andrew Cimpan) sit in the top 10. The rest of the leader board is represented by Russia (Vitaly Lunkin, the big winner this year so far with more than $3.8 million), Italy (Jeffrey Lisandro), Canada (Mike Leah and Poorya Nasari), Mexico (Angel Guillen), Brazil (Alexandre Gomes), and Ireland (Jude Ainsworth).

In the previous 12 Player of the Year races, there has never been an international champion. Some previous champions — most notably, Daniel Negreanu (2004), Men Nguyen (2001, 2003, 2005), and David Pham (2007) — were born in other countries but resided in the United States when crowned the year’s most prolific tournament player.

Last year saw four international players finish in the top 10. In 2007, 2006, and 2005, a single player accomplished that task.

So, what gives?

As poker continues to grow in seemingly every European country and many developing nations, more and more tournaments abroad qualify for POY points.
So far in 2009, 50 tournaments with, at times, more than a single qualifying event have counted for points. This year, Card Player counted international events with a buy-in of at least $1,000 that satisfied all other POY criteria (see all of the criteria at www.CardPlayer.com/rules-poy). In total, Card Player will count more than 75 international tournament series toward Player of the Year in 2009 (more than double the number in 2008).

On top of that, players from around the globe are filling and winning more and more prestigious events. And, for the first time, domestic tournaments, such as the World Poker Tour, are seeing their attendance numbers dwarfed by events in Europe and Asia.

Will this trend continue? Nobody knows for sure. But one thing we are certain of is that there is still a lot of poker to be played this year before a Player of the Year winner is declared. In this issue, we profile the man who is currently leading the pack, Eric Baldwin. Check out his story on Page 48.