With a slight lull in the tournament poker world prior to the European Poker Tour’s Grand Final, the World Poker Tour’s World Championship and the beginning of the World Series of Poker, the major Player of the Year races seem to have a bit of consensus as to who the best player has been to this point in 2012.
Using his fast start at this year’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, former World Champion Jonathan Duhamel has been able to push himself to the top of two of the three POY ranking systems. Back in January, Duhamel racked up four final tables (including a win) and earned over $1.2 million and he hasn’t slowed down since then. Duhamel earned two more final tables in February (at preliminary events on the EPT Deauville and the L. A. Poker Classic) and went deep in the WPT’s Bay 101 Shooting Stars (finishing 13th) to add on points to his POY drive. These efforts have garnered him the top slot in two of the three rankings.
On Bluff Magazine’s POY race, Duhamel has been able to rake in 713.3 points, putting him ahead of Aussie Millions champion Oliver Speidel’s 592.81 points. These two gentlemen, through their early 2012 success, have been able to pull out over such players as Daniel Kelly (453.35), PCA champion John Dibella (450.75) and Ruben Visser (406.6) to take the top honors for the first quarter of 2012. Rounding out the Top Ten is L. A. Poker Classic champion Sean Jazayeri, Faraz Jaka, Will Failla, Bruno Lopes and Jannick Wrang.
On the Global Poker Index POY race, Duhamel once again holds onto the top slot, but the cast of characters behind him are quite different. Duhamel has racked up 595.68 points on the GPI POY, but second place is held down by another Canadian, Erik Cajelais. Cajelais has four cashes so far this year, topped by his fourth place finish at the Bay 101, to pick up 342.88 points, good for second place. Lopes is ranked much higher by the GPI criteria, taking third place with 337.28 points. Following these three men are Eui Kim, Noah Schwartz, Jaka, Samuel Chartier, Speidel, Stephen O’Dwyer and Jose Manuel Nadal.
The only ranking that doesn’t have Duhamel at the head of the field is CardPlayer Magazine’s POY race. Speidel has been able to take the top slot, with his 2,740 points, but the lead is a slim one over a host of players. Dibella takes down the second place position with 2,512 points and Kelly slides into the third slot with 2,378. Duhamel doesn’t appear until fourth place, with 2,290 points, and Jaka is in fifth with 2,200 points. The remainder of the Top Ten is Jazayeri, David “Doc” Sands, Kyle Julius, Vadzim Kursevich and Ken Wong, with less than 1000 points separating the Top Ten players.
The rankings will have some new faces on it as we begin the second quarter of 2012. There are several high profile tournaments on the horizon, including the Irish Poker Open, the EPT Berlin and Grand Final and four tournaments on the WPT agenda, including the WPT Championship. This also doesn’t take into account other top tournaments between now and the beginning of June, such as the final events of the 2011-12 schedule for the World Series of Poker Circuit, events for the Heartland Poker Tour and stand-alone tournaments at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles and the Venetian DeepStack Extravaganza III in Las Vegas beginning at the end of May. (Oh, and that little gathering at the Rio, which begins on May 27).
For the players who are among the leaders on any of the POY rankings, wearing the crown will be a difficult task. Every POY race rewards players who can perform over the course of a calendar year, rather than someone who can catch a short-term hot streak. Thus, by the time we look at the rankings a few weeks from now, there could be a whole host of new contenders on the different Top Ten Player of the Year races.
