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!
This will be even more evident after Bluff made a few changes to their formula this year –most notably in the number of entrants required for a tournament to be considered, and also by limiting a player to their 10 best results from the year, taking a more quality over quantity approach. Bluff will still take into account a player’s results from the previous year, counting those point totals at ½ value for the current tournament season.
Here is a look at the standings up to this point:
Bluff Magazine Player of the Year standings through January 2011:
- Galen Hall — 472.50 points
- Eugene Katchalov — 454.75 points
- David Gorr — 405.00 points
- Alexander Kuzmin — 358.56 points
- Will Molson — 331.20 points
- Christopher Oliver — 330.75 points
- Lucien Cohen — 306.00 points
- James Keys — 294.23 points
- Erik Seidel — 262.28 points
- Sam Trickett — 250.00 points
Card Player Magazine Player of the Year standings through January 2011:
- Galen Hall – 3,000 points
- Chris Oliver – 2,500 points
- David Gorr – 2,400 points
- Anton Ionel – 2,000 points
- James Keys—2,000 points
- Jeffrey Rossiter – 1,600 points
- Sam Stein – 1,500 points
- Erik Seidel – 1,462 points
- Kevin Vannicola – 1,364 points
- Randy Dorfman – 1,270 points
So while there is some overlap between the two publications, clearly Bluff Magazine puts a heavier emphasis on wins and money won, whereas Card Player seems to reward high finishes in major events. Perhaps the two biggest discrepancies on the list are Sam Trickett, who lands at #10 on the Bluff POY leader-board, but checks in at #47 on Card Player’s list, and Eugene Katchalov who is #2 at Bluff and #48 at Card Player!
It will be interesting to see how the new formula implemented by Bluff will take shape, and if the standings grow farther apart or closer together as more results come in.
Related Posts
- CardPlayer Player of the Year Race Heats Up at Foxwoods - November 1, 2010
- Tom Marchese is Card Player Player of the Year - December 29, 2010
- Player of the Year Race Heats up at WSOP - June 23, 2010
Written by Bill Nye on February 4th, 2011