John Racener Finishes Fifth in Card Player POY Race

The 2010 Card Player Player of the Year race has come to a close, and following a couple of big finishes in November and December, 24-year-old John Racener earned 4,493 POY points to finish in fifth place in the rankings.

Leading up to 2010, Racener had over $1.7 million tournament winnings and had established himself as a dangerous player. He got started at age 16, when he took $50 his mom gave him to play with on a poker site and turned it into $30,000 in six months time. He followed that up a couple of years later with a $130,000 win in a major Sunday online tournament.

When he finally turned 21, he started to show what he could accomplish in live events. He finished third in the 2006 WSOP Circuit – Atlantic City for $103,527, then eighth at the 2007 WPT Winter Poker Open for another $166,161. He wrapped up 2007 with a first-place finish at the 2007 WSOP Circuit – Atlantic City for $379,392. He made final tables at the 2008 and 2009 WSOP.

But 2010 was Racener’s best year yet.

2010: A Breakout Year

In 2010, Racener did what every player dreams of doing — making the WSOP main event final table. What resulted was not just the biggest cash of his year, but also of his career. The Florida pro earned a whopping $5.5 million when he outlasted all but one (Jonathan Duhamel) of the 7,318 other players in the $10,000 buy-in WSOP main event. His runner-up finish in the November Nine earned him 3,000 POY points. But he wasn’t done there.

A month later Racener found himself at another major final table. He was one of 438 players in December’s $10,000 buy-in WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic main event, and he made his way to the stacked final table featuring eventual winner Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew Robl, Vanessa Rousso, Kirk Morrison and Ted Lawson. Racener eventually fell in fourth place, for which he earned $232,271 and another 1,200 POY points.

Those two late 2010 finishes were enough for Racener to grab hold of fifth place in the POY rankings and hold off Harrison Gimbel by 413 points. Racener finished just 115 points behind Vanessa Selbst. He was 2,245 behind POY winner Thomas Marchese. Racener’s career tournament winnings are now up to $7.6 million.

Here is a look at the final standings in the Card Player Player of the Year Race:

1: Thomas Marchese — 6,738
2: Dwyte Pilgrim — 5,576
3: Sorel Mizzi — 4,851
4: Vanessa Selbst — 4,608
5: John Racener — 4,493
6: Harrison Gimbel — 4,080
7: Andy Frankenberger — 4,010
8: Jeffrey Papola — 3,870
9: John Juanda — 3,717
10: Jonathan Duhamel — 3,600

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