Player of the Year: Thomas Marchese Holds Player of the Year Lead With Two Major Events Remaining in 2010

Thomas Marchese Continues to Impress Late in the Year
At the time of this writing, Thomas Marchese had continued to score points late in the Card Player 2010 Player of the Year (POY) race to distance himself from the competition in coming down the homestretch.
His latest POY score came at the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic in early December. He won a $1,000 no-limit hold’em rebuy event at Bellagio, which was his second tournament win of the year. He took home $45,958 in prize money and 252 POY points.
With 6,738 points, he led the race by a margin of 1,162 points over Dwyte Pilgrim (5,576 points), heading into the final weeks of the year. Marchese has made 11 final tables in 2010 and won $2,068,658 in POY events.
The POY battle will come down to the wire, as there are just two major point opportunities remaining — the €5,300 PokerStars European Poker Tour Prague main event, and the $10,000 World Series of Poker Circuit Eastern Regional Championship in Atlantic City.
WPT Five-Diamond World Poker Classic Awards Thousands of POY Points
The World Poker Tour Five-Diamond World Poker Classic $10,000 no-limit hold’em main event attracted a field of 438 players. The turnout provided large POY point gains for the players who made a deep run in the event. Among them was POY contender Sorel Mizzi, who won 200 points for his ninth-place finish. This took his total for the year to 4,785 points, which was enough to pass Vanessa Selbst for third place.
Antonio Esfandiari captured the top prize in the tournament, $870,214, along with his second WPT title and 2,400 POY points. Other big scores were made by runner-up Andrew Robl (2,000 points), and third-place finisher Vanessa Rousso (1,600 points).
It was fourth-place finisher and World Series of Poker main-event runner-up John Racener who made the most significant move in the POY race. He added 1,200 points to his total, for 4,493 overall, putting him in fifth place in the standings. The bulk of his points came from his “November Nine” appearance (3,000 points), while his other points came from a final-table appearance at the WSOP Europe (fifth place in the $7,395 pot-limit Omaha event), and from another deep run at the WSOP this summer (21st place in the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha world championship).
Rounding out the final table were Kirk Morrison, who garnered 1,000 points for his fifth-place finish, and Ted Lawson, who captured 800 points as the sixth-place finisher. ♠