Phan Moves to Third in POY With Second WSOP Bracelet Win

The summer months are an important time in terms of the Card Player Player of the Year (POY) race, because not only does it mark the halfway point, but thousands of POY points are awarded at the World Series of Poker and other major tournament series.

Erik Seidel and Michael Binger still have the number one and two spots, respectively. Both have padded their POY score with a few hundred points by making one final table each so far at the WSOP, but the story of the POY race right now is John Phan. He is the only multi-bracelet winner of the this year’s WSOP so far, and his two wins combined with his other POY-worthy finishes in 2008 put Phan squarely in third place.

Phan started off the year with a final-table finish in a preliminary event at the World Poker Open, worth 78 points. He then cashed in the $10,000 buy-in World Poker Tour World Poker Open main event, finishing in 22nd place, which awarded him another 39 points. Phan followed that WPT main-event cash with another, but this time, he made the televised final table at the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament. Sixth place was good for 760 points. With only 877 points going into the WSOP, Phan wasn’t even in the top 200 on the POY leader board.

After one WSOP cash, Phan went on a run and took down both the $3,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em event (864 points) and the $2,500 buy-in limit deuce-to-seven triple-draw lowball event (1,440 points), bringing his total POY points to 3,181.

Two new names have also been added to the top 10, and, while they were added during this summer, it wasn’t from points awarded at the WSOP. Across the country, the Borgata Summer Open ran its $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em championship, which attracted 345 players to generate a prize pool of more than $1.7 million. Allen Bari won the event for more than half a million dollars and received 1,680 POY points, vaulting him into fifth place in the race, behind David Chiu in fourth. Bari had a solid amount of points accumulated already before this win from three final-table finishes in major events, including the WPT Foxwoods Poker Classic main event, wherein he placed eighth. Bari also won a preliminary event during the WSOP Circuit event at Caesars Atlantic City, and, coincidently, the runner-up in that event was the same player he went up against in the Borgata Summer Open championship.

Vinny Pahuja fell short to Bari for the second time but received nearly $290,000 and 1,400 POY points for his efforts. That was enough to put him in seventh place, behind Dario Minieri, who now finds himself in sixth place after winning a WSOP bracelet in the $2,500 no-limit hold'em six-handed event. Like Bari, Pahuja also had previous POY-contributing cashes. Pahuja has made six final tables this year, which is the second most of the top 10 players, behind Binger with seven.

Rounding out the top 10 is European Poker Tour German Open winner Michael McDonald (eighth), EPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion Bertrand Grospellier (ninth), and Brandon Cantu (10th), who won the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star main event. The $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event that starts today at the WSOP is the next big event to award major POY points. According to the 2008 POY scoring criteria, the winner will receive more than 1,000 points if the number of entrants is close to that of last year’s field.

For a complete listing of those on the POY leader board, find the link to the official Card Player POY page under the Tournaments Tab.

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