The two most sought after awards in Tournament Poker are the Bluff Magazine Player of the Year Award and the Card Player Magazine Player of the Year Award. Despite both publications using a mathematical formula to determine their winners the POY awards typically end up in the hands of two different players thanks to Bluff counting the previous year’s results and a slight difference in the way points are calculated. So I always find it interesting to match-up the two lists!
A quick look at the Player of the Year standings through the first three months of 2011 reminds me of the line from the movie Major League where the manager says, “Things are starting to come together Patrick”. Now that players have had enough time to make a few deep runs in tournaments, consistency is beginning to trump the players with one big score on the leader-boards.
Here is a look at the standings up to this point:
Bluff Magazine Player of the Year standings through March 2011:
- Galen Hall — 508.50 points
- Marvin Rettenmaier – 496.93 points
- Annand (Victor) Ramdin – 461.13 points
- Eugene Katchalov – 454.75 points
- Alessio Isaia – 441.56 points
- Vivek Rajkumar – 426.15 points
- Randy Dorfman – 422.65 points
- David Gorr – 405.00 points
- Alexander Kuzmin – 399.36 points
- Gregory Brooks – 382.50 points
Due to Bluff’s formula that incorporates each players 2010 results as well as their 2011 results you tend to see the cream rise to the top a bit faster than at Card Player, which is precisely what happened in March as the players with one big score in 2011 all dropped down the rankings.
Card Player Magazine Player of the Year standings through March 2011:
- Galen Hall – 3,000 points, $2,300,000
- Marvin Rettenmaier– 2,520 points, $422,348
- Chris Oliver – 2,500 points, $1,800,000
- Gregory Brooks – 2,400 points, $1,654,120
- David Gorr – 2,400 points, $1,992,532
- Victor Ramdin – 2,248 points, $597,790
- Michael Tureniec – 2,040 points, $707,607
- Anton Ionel – 2,000 points, $1,350,000
- James Keys—2,000 points, $1,031,140
- Vivek Rajkumar – 2,000 points, $908,730
On the Card Player standings we still have a lot of the big winners from the first months of 2011 high up on the leader-board, but we’ve also seen some movement into the Top 10 by more consistent players like Vivek Rajkumar and Victor Ramdin.
A couple other players to keep an eye on include Tim West, Vladimir Geshkenbein, and the #5 man in the Bluff rankings Alessio Isaia.
Related Posts
- Player of the Year Rankings for January (Bluff/Cardplayer) - February 4, 2011
- Player of the Year Race Heats up at WSOP - June 23, 2010
- Player of the Year Rankings for February - February 28, 2011
Written by Steve Ruddock on April 1st, 2011