Events in the Midwest and Portugal Influence the Player of the Year Top 20

Dwyte Pilgrim Climbs to Third Place

Dwyte Pilgrim has made a habit of making final tables in 2010, so it comes as no surprise that he finished third in the World Series of Poker Circuit $1,500 main event at the Horseshoe Council Bluffs. It was good for $39,531 and 400 Card Player 2010 Player of the Year (POY) points. That enabled Pilgrim to jump into third place overall with 3,776 points.

Pilgrim has made more POY-qualifying final tables, 12, than any other player this year. He has even made final tables and won a few tournaments that don’t count in the POY standings. Just four days before his final-table performance in Iowa, he won a $200 no-limit hold’em preliminary event at the WSOP Circuit stop. Pilgrim has owned the medium buy-in tournaments in 2010, and he could ride his success in that niche to a POY title.

EPT Vilamoura Main Event

The second PokerStars European Poker Tour main event of season seven came to a conclusion in Portugal recently, and for the second tournament in a row, the EPT set records. The €5,000 no-limit hold’em main event in Vilamoura attracted 384 players and created a prize pool of €1,862,400, making it the largest poker tournament in the history of the country. The tournament grew 19.3 percent over last year’s event.

There was €467,835 and 1,824 POY points up for grabs to the champion, and it was Englishman Toby Lewis who claimed the top prize to climb into 35th place on the leader board (2,184 points). Lewis made his first score of the year in Venice, where he finished seventh in the PokerStars Italian Poker Tour event, which was good for 360 points.

Martin Jacobson was the runner-up, and he took home €297,894 and 1,520 points to jump into 33rd place (2,240 points). His other POY cash came when he finished fourth in a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event at the World Series of Poker, which netted him 720 points.

The biggest gain made in Portugal in the POY race was by fourth-place finisher Sam Trickett. He made his third final table of the year in Vilamoura, earning 912 points and increasing his POY earnings for the year to $851,868. He now has 2,922 points and is at the gates of the top 10 in 14th place. He owes his lofty spot in the standings to a strong performance at the WSOP this summer, which included a runner-up finish in a $5,000 no-limit hold’em event (1,600 points) and a seventh-place finish in the $25,000 six-handed no-limit hold’em event (410 points).

Here is the breakdown of prize money and POY points awarded at the EPT Vilamoura final table:

1 – Toby Lewis – €467,835 (1,824 points)
2 – Martin Jacobson – €297,894 (1,520 points)
3 – Jason Lee – €186,240 (1,216 points)
4 – Sam Trickett – €139,680 (912 points)
5 – Teddy Sheringham – €93,120 (760 points)
6 – Frederick Jensen – €74,496 (608 points)