As 2009 came to a close, popular poker publication CardPlayer announced its Online Player of the Year (OPOY) award. The winner was New Jersey pro Steve “gboro780” Gross, who became the third honoree of the prestigious award, joining Alex “AJKHoosier1” Kamberis (2008) and Isaac “westmenloAA” Baron (2007).
Gross earned $1,216,413 playing online across the major sites in 2009 to accrue 10,188 points, the highest total since the CardPlayer OPOY rankings began in 2007. He started the year off strong, with a second-place finish in a $500 event on Full Tilt for $126,506 on January 18. In February, Gross won a $300 Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) event for $275,000.
Then in April, during the first-ever PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), Gross found himself heads up in the $3,000 Mixed Hold’em event with Aussie superstar James “Andy McLeod” Obst. The confrontation was one of the most memorable of 2009, with McLeod coming out on top to claim the $184,000 first prize; Gross walked away with $128,000 for his runner-up finish.
Gross won 21 tournaments in 2009, but it was a fourth-place finish on Wednesday, December 30 that clinched the OPOY award. The result came in the $100 rebuy on Full Tilt, earning him more than $12,000 in his final cash of the year. Without any qualifying tournaments left on the schedule for the rest of the field to catch him, Gross wrapped up the title.
The OPOY runner-up was David “SirSands” Sands (9,420 points), who made a valiant push toward the top of the leaderboard in December. He won the Full Tilt $100 rebuy for $47,275 on December 20th and then a week later took down the $200 rebuy on PokerStars for $43,952. Sands’ biggest score of the year came in May, when he claimed victory of FTOPS Event #10, a $300 No Limit Hold ’em tournament, for $259,440. While he came up short in the CardPlayer race, Sands’ fantastic December helped him vault all the way up to number two on the PocketFives.com Tournament Rankings in the site’s first update of 2010. DoylesRoom Brunson 10 member Chris “moorman1” Moorman holds the number one spot.
Thayer “THAY3R” Rasmussen (9,100 points), Moorman (8,464), Shaun “TedsFishFry” Deeb (8,290), Joe “hoodini10” Udine (8,052), Jeremiah “Believer82” Vinsant (7,994), Jonathan “shipitobv” DeLong (7,926), Casey “bigdogpckt5s” Jarzabek (7,776), and Dan “djk123” Kelly (7,724) rounded out the top 10 of the OPOY rankings. Kelly’s $1,409,090 in earnings was the second most of 2009, trailing only Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko, who won the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event for $1,715,200. Kelly took fourth place in that tournament for $643,200.00.
In order to qualify for the CardPlayer OPOY rankings, players must enter tournaments with an average buy-in of at least $100, have a field of at least 100 players, and a prize pool of at least $100,000.
