Player of the Year, Top Ten
Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi continues to be a leader in the Poker
Player of the Year race two months into the year. He has not only
maintained, but also expanded, his advantage in the race after a very
busy couple months of poker tournaments. In the L.A. Poker Classic,
Mizrachi’s second place finish added another final table to his score in
2006. Mizrachi has racked up the points in the early going of the
season, with a huge lead in the Player of the Year Race and an almost $2
million bankroll.
Mizrachi is not the only contender in this year’s race, however, as the
field has expanded to include several new talents. Alan Goehring was the
World Poker Tour’s big winner this year, coming out ahead of last year’s
Champ Mizrachi and several others as he captured the largest payday in
the Tour’s history, a whopping $2.3 million. The win at the L.A. Poker
Classic put him in the POY Top Ten for the first time in his career.
Even so, he is still over 2,000 points behind Mizrachi in second place.
Goehring finds himself in a tie with veteran Nam Le, who was the last
player standing in the Bay 101 Shooting Stars tournament in San Jose,
California late last month. Le is unsung in the poker world, although he
captured $300,000 in prize money in 2005 while winning four different
tournaments. This early season win should have people keeping an eye on
him for the rest of the year.
World Poker Open Champion Scotty Nguyen is looking to repeat his the
Poker Player of the Year, and is currently sitting in fourth place. His
drop down from second last month is mostly due to the amount of high
dollar tournaments that have taken place in the early going this year.
He has been able to build on his bankroll, but he has not been able to
hold off the other players moving in the top ten. He is a scant 46 point
ahead of An “The Boss” Tran, who remains in fifth.
Michael Woo is currently in sixth place, with Daniel Quach and Ravi
Udayakumar tied for seventh. William Edler is the next top tenner, and
rounding out the leaders is WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open runner-Up John
D’Agostino.
With significant tournaments taking place all over the place and almost
weekly in the last two months, do not expect many of the players to
remain stationary for too long. There is still a lot of poker to be
played in 2006, and the way the season is shaping up, it is anyone’s
game.
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