Player Of The Year

The beginning of the beginning of the end....

Fifty-One bracelets have been handed out; two more are ready to be presented today; the Player of the Year has been determined, congratulations to Erick Lindgren; the Ante Up for Africa event goes off today. Then, finally, we get to the Main Event and we answer most of the questions everyone has waited for.

Will we have more entries than last year?

Will the professionals somehow continue their dominance they have shown thru 53 preliminary events?

Will it all run as smooth as the tournaments have run so far? By the way, nice job to the WSOP staff this was truly a nicely run Series so far. Minor mistakes, quick fixes and overall solid and uniform floor decisions. Kudos to Tournament Director Jack Effel and his WSOP floor staff.

Another great move comes later this week, when the WSOP Media event is brought back with substantial prizes given to the favorite charities of the final table participants. A great solution to that on again off again event.

Then tomorrow we reach the 2008 World Series of Poker $10,000 No Limit Hold'em Main Event. Four Day One flights, two Day Two flights and five more days to play down to the "November Nine" or the "Fall Final". Then all the WSOP eggs go into that ESPN/November basket and we all wait, watch, hope and pray. No matter who you favor in that mass of poker humanity, say a little prayer that at least one or two "names" make it to the final nine. Nothing could be better for poker than to see Scotty, Mike, Phil, Phil, Erick, Jennifer, Antonio, Gus, Daniel, Joe, Johnny** or heaven help us Doyle! make the final table.

It all starts tomorrow.

**Dewey, Cyndy, Bill, Gavin, Carlos, Chris, Doug, Liz, David, Tony, Lyle, Barry, Berry, Huck, Patrik, David, the other Phil and the other Phil, Greg, Layne, Chad, Isabelle, Todd, Freddy, T.J., Michael, Mike again, Ted, Gabe, Andy, Howard, John, John, John or John, Lee, Annie, Eli, Hoyt, Andy or even Jerry.

Below I have compared the current Player of the Year rankings from Bluff and CardPlayer Magazines. I have a couple of observations:

-David Pham & Bill Edler seem to be the top players so far this year;
-J.C. Tran, Robert Mizrachi & Ted Lawson seem to be top ten players;
-CardPlayer gives a lot of weight to the WSOP (Schneider, Hamby, Clements)
-Will CardPlayer change its rating system for the new CardPlayer Europe Magazine?
-For that matter do either of these publications know there is poker outside of the United States?

Here is the comparison:

CardPlayer Magazine Current Standings
1. David Pham 5,410 [2nd in Bluff rankings]
2. Bill Edler 4,696 [1st]
3. J.C. Tran 4,458 [7th]
4. Tom Schneider 3,792 [not ranked]
5. Jonathan Little 3,618 [14th]
6. Jared Hamby 3,573 [59th]
7. James Van Alstyne 3,480 [200th]
8. Scott Clements 3,218 [116th]
9. Ted Lawson 2,999 [4th]
10. Robert Mizrachi 2,984 [9th]

Bluff Magazine Current Standings
1. Bill Edler 809.72 [2nd on CardPlayer]
2. David Pham 625.88 [1st]
3. Kirk Morrison 609.24 [18th]
4. Ted Lawson 607.44 [9th]
5. Nam Le 599.79 [38th]
6. Joe Sebok 590.59 [128th]
7. J.C. Tran 586.08 [3rd]
8. Tim West 581.39 [157th]
9. Robert Mizrachi 538.33 [10th]
10. Danny Wong [11th]

Current European Poker Rankings
1st Søren Kongsgaard (Denmark) - 8,725
2nd Andreas Krause (Germany) - 6,875
3rd Dave Colclough (Wales) - 4,585
4th Dave Smith (England) - 4,240
5th Annette Obrestad (Norway) - 4,140
6th Erich Kollmann (Austria) - 4,085
7th Samir Shakhtoor (Sweden) - 3,940
8th Sebastian Ruthenberg (Germany) - 3,885
9th James Dempsey (England) - 3,706
10th Siegfried Rath (Austria) - 3,630

I got a note from one of my poker friends yesterday that said:

"I see your buddy made it to the top of the ESPN rankings."

Before I went to take a look, I asked myself two questions.

#1: "What is the Bluff/ESPN criteria for their rankings?"
#2: "Which buddy was he referring to?"

With all the magazines and online sites ranking players and doing "Player of the Year" races, you need to know how player performance is used in the rankings. And I wondered if by "buddy" my friend was joking with me and perhaps he meant that one of the players I really dislike was in first place or if he actually meant that someone I knew and liked was currently Numero Uno.

So I tried a little experiment. First, I went and looked at the Bluff/ESPN criteria. Here they are:

The Bluff/ESPN Power Rankings are based on the results of major tournaments over a trailing 24-month period. Qualifying tournaments must have a minimum $5,000 buy-in and at least 100 participants.

Bluff Media reserves the right to include any high-denomination, high profile events. Tournaments occurring in the trailing 12-month period are given additional weighting. Players must finish in the money to earn points.

Next, without looking at any database of results, I picked who I think/feel/remember should be at the top of this list. My first and second choices were heavily influenced by my friend's statement that: "your buddy made it to #1". So consider one of my favorite great players and my least favorite great player are one and two in my selections. I will leave it to you to decide which is which.

I put my top 11 [I gave myself one extra because of the "buddy" tip] on the list below. I did pretty well, all of my top 11 are in the actual top 30, except for that one distraction I put in the #2 slot.

Here is the ESPN/Bluff Poker Ranking list as of July 30, 2007 with my guesses in [brackets].