2015 CarbonPoker Card Player Player of the Year Update -- Taylor Paur Climbs To Second

There was a ton of movement this week in the 2015 Card Player Player of the Year race, sponsored by CarbonPoker, is Marching forward. Here is a look at the events that made the largest impact over the past seven days:

World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event

Taylor Paur has emerged victorious from a field of 708 entries to win the 2015 World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star $7,500 no-limit hold’em main event. For the win the 26-year-old poker pro from El Dorado Hills, CA earned his first WPT main event title and $1,214,200.

Paur also scored 1,824 Player of the Year points for the win. Paur, who won the 2010 Card Player Online Player of the Year award, had already made a big final table finish this year when he placed fifth in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Latin American Poker Tour $3,000 main event for $94,920 and 570 points. Paur wasn’t done racking up POY points quite yet though, but more on that later.

Joining him in scoring a ton of points was runner-up Isaac Baron, who earned $704,200 and 1,520 points for his latest big score. That alone was enough to catapult him into a tie with Chance Kornuth for 13th place in the POY standings.

Third-place finisher Jacob Bazeley already had a final table under his belt in 2015, a fifth place score in the Heartland Poker Tour Golden Gate main event. With the $461,470 and 1,216 points he earned he moved into 12th place on the POY leaderboard.

Bay 101 Shooting Star $25,000 High Roller

Just a week after taking down the WPT L.A. Poker Classic main event and less than a month after winning the WPT Fallsview Poker Classic main event Anthony Zinno found himself back in the winner’s circle yet again.

His third title of the year came in the $25,000 high roller event at the Bay 101 Shooting Star festival. The tournament drew a total of 20 entries to build a $490,000 prize pool.

Zinno defeated Paul Volpe heads up to capture the title, the $197,758 first-place prize and 420 POY points, strengthening his hold on the top spot in the Player of the Year race. He now has 3,960 points and year-to-date earnings of $1,466,038.

Third-place finisher Pratyush Buddiga also had two prior final table under his belt in 2015, and the $98,000 and 280 points he earned in this event were enough to move him into 18th place in the overall standings with 1,410 points and $566,070 in year-to-date earnings.

World Poker Tour Rolling Thunder Main Event

Ravee Mathi topped a field of 379 entries to win the WPT Rolling Thunder $3,500 no-limit hold’em main event. For the win the 37-year-old software engineer from Dublin, CA was awarded the $266,857 first-place prize and his first major tournament title. While that is impressive in it’s own right, it’s made even more incredible by the fact that Mathi finished sixth in the Bay 101 Shooting star main event just days earlier. As a result he climbed into 16th place in the POY standings with 1,508 points and $435,117 in earnings so far in 2015.

Amazingly Mathi was not the only player among the final six to make back-to-back WPT final tables. Taylor Paur, who won the WPT Bay 101 main event late last Friday, also joined him in final six. Paur fell just two spots short of becoming the second-back-to-back champion of the year on the WPT after Zinno achieved that feat a few weeks earlier.

Mathi, Paur and Jesse Rockowitz made it down to the final three, where they battled it out for just shy of 100 hands before Paur eventually succumbed in third place, taking home $113,154 and 600 more points. With his previous win and another final table already under his belt Paur solidified his hold on the second-place spot on the Player of the Year leader board, bringing his point total to 2,994 and his year-to-date earnings to $1,422,274.

Here is a look at the current top 20 in the POY standings:

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