Player of the Year

The Ukrainian Sensation Takes Over Player of the Year Lead
Yevgeniy Timoshenko Wins WCOOP Main Event
By Julio Rodriguez

There’s high-stakes tournament action going on all over the globe, but it was an online tournament that had the biggest impact on the Card Player 2009 Player of the Year (POY) race. The $5,000 main event of the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker drew a remarkable 2,144 players, generating a prize pool of more than $10 million.

The winner was Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko, who earned $1,715,200 for the victory. In addition to his lofty payday, Timoshenko picked up 2,880 POY points.

You may recognize the young pro from his breakthrough performance in April, when he took down the World Poker Tour Championship at Bellagio for $2,149,960. That tournament netted him 2,448 points, which means that after the WCOOP concluded, we had a new leader in the POY race.

Timoshenko now has more than $6 million in lifetime tournament earnings, despite being legally allowed to play the tournament circuit since only last year. After taking a day or two to enjoy the win, Timoshenko announced that he was heading to London to try to put the POY race out of reach for his competitors.

Speaking of London, as we go to press, there have been three champions crowned in preliminary events at the World Series of Poker Europe. John Paul Kelly, Erik Cajelais, and Jani Vilmunen all picked up bracelets in the early going.

Kelly took down event No. 1, $1,500 no-limit hold’em, and picked up $225,535 in the process. This was his second bracelet of the year, as he won a $1,500 pot-limit hold’em tournament at the WSOP in Las Vegas. Those two victories have put him in 64th place in the POY race. He is still far off the pace, but is now within striking distance of the top 10.

Only the main event remains at the WSOP Europe, but that doesn’t mean that the action is leaving London anytime soon. Immediately following the conclusion of the main event, the London Poker Festival on the European Poker Tour will kick off.

The EPT London series will feature 15 different events, of which 11 will qualify in the POY standings. The series will start with a $33,000 buy-in high-roller tournament, and conclude with an $8,000 main event, which is expected to draw a large field.

All of that London action didn’t bring poker in the U.S. to a halt. The World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open rolled into Atlantic City, and because of the lower buy-in of $3,500, a record 1,018 players entered the championship event.

Mike Leah, sixth-place resident in the POY standings, made a deep run in the event and was threatening to move up the leader board, but ultimately did not make a move when things didn’t go his way late in the tournament.

The eventual winner was New Yorker Olivier Busquet, who overcame a 20-1 chip deficit when heads up to come back and win the title and the $925,514 first-place prize. Busquet’s tournament earnings are now nearing $1.3 million.

The POY standings are sure to undergo a bit of a shake-up in the next few weeks, and are always updated in real time on CardPlayer.com.

PLAYER RANK FINAL TABLES POINTS WINNINGS
Yevgeniy Timoshenko 1 2 5,413 $3,903,584
Eric Baldwin 2 9 4,636 $1,074,072
Vitaly Lunkin 3 4 4,337 $3,140,037
Cornel Andrew Cimpan 4 3 3,570 $1,844,684
Angel Guillen 5 3 3,492 $943,268
Mike Leah 6 8 3,257 $666,795
Brock Parker 7 2 3,132 $776,433
Alexandre Gomes 8 2 3,120 $1,937,670
Jeffrey Lisandro 9 3 3,018 $781,252
Poorya Nazari 10 1 3,000 $3,000,000

Look Out: Olivier Busquet
Takes Down WPT Borgata Poker Open in Dramatic Fashion
By Julio Rodriguez

You may not know 28-year-old Olivier Busquet by name, but you may have heard of his infamous online results under the screen names “livb112” and “Adonis112." As the running joke goes, he has one hell of a sick graph. Playing predominantly heads-up sit-and-gos, Busquet has dominated online, grinding out nearly $2 million over the last four years, one match at a time. In mid-September, he made a deep run in the $25,000 World Championship of Online Poker high-roller heads-up championship, losing to eventual winner Jonathan Jaffe and picking up what was then his largest cash, $90,000.

The New York City resident has a philosophy degree from Cornell University, but he found work after college in the financial industry.

After discovering his groove in poker, he was fired from his job for playing online during the time that he was supposed to be working. Suddenly out of a job, he began to take the game more seriously, eventually eliminating the need for a 9-to-5 altogether.

Heading to the final table of the recent WPT Borgata Poker Open, Busquet had a big chip lead and more experience than anyone else at the table. After he took out Kenny Nguyen in sixth place, his chip count was almost twice as much as anyone else’s, and he was a near lock for the title.

But then the ultra-aggressive Jeremy Brown took out the next three players, putting Busquet at a 20-1 chip disadvantage. Of course, heads-up play is Busquet’s bread and butter, and after a few double-ups, the ball was now in his court. Finally, Busquet put his opponent away, getting him to commit all of his chips with an open-end straight draw against his flopped trips.

For his win, Busquet earned $925,514 and 1,800 Player of the Year points. He currently sits in 80th place, but is only one major score away from breaking into the top tier of players for 2009.

Now with nearly $1.3 million in tournament earnings, Busquet is performing well outside the online world. As a newly crowned WPT champion, he now has a new claim to fame other than his sick graphs, and can be recognized as a well-rounded poker player who’s to be feared in all aspects of the game.