Player of the Year

The Bay 101 Shooting Star $10,000 championship event recently vaulted three new contenders into the top 10 of the Card Player 2009 Player of the Year (POY) race. Sitting in fourth place on the leader board is tournament veteran Steve Brecher, who won the Shooting Star championship, $1,025,500, and 2,340 POY points. This was the first major tournament win of his career, and his first cash of 2009. He now has $1,730,701 in career tournament winnings.

Kathy Liebert was the runner-up in the Shooting Star championship, marking the second time that a well-known woman professional has finished second in the event (J.J. Liu in 2007). Liebert captured $550,000 and 1,950 points for her strong performance. This was the third cash of the year for Liebert, who finished in 12th place at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January and 18th place in the World Series of Poker Circuit stop at Harrah’s Tunica in February. Liebert now has $670,000 in tournament winnings in 2009, and 2,100 POY points, which is good for sixth place. She now has $5,550,577 in career tournament winnings, the all-time most for a woman.

Chris Moore finished in third place at Bay 101, but thanks to his runner-up finish in the L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 heads-up championship in February, he now resides in fifth place with 2,110 points. Moore won $291,500 and 1,560 points at Bay 101, and $190,000 and 550 points at Commerce Casino. This also marks the third year in a row that Moore has scored a six-figure payday in March. He finished in third place at the 2007 Wynn Classic ($192,060), and then won the Wynn Classic in 2008 ($692,286), his first major tournament title. With his final-table appearance at Bay 101, Moore increased his career tournament winnings to $1,471,843.

Further Afield — Acquiring Points the Hard Way

While most of the players at the top of the POY leader board have one large cash to thank for their top spot, some players are building their POY resumes piece by piece. Some have combined a large cash with other tournament success — most notably, Chris Moore in fifth place (two final tables) and Tristan Clemencon in ninth place (four final tables). Bobby Suer (21st place) and Soheil Shamseddin (23rd place) — who finished second and third, respectively, at the World Poker Tour Southern Poker Championship — have combined a final-table appearance with other success to stay within striking distance of the top 10.

Jeff Madsen (32nd place) has had consistent tournament success in every month of 2009. He has cashed six times and made five final tables. He made H.O.R.S.E. final tables at the Aussie Millions and L.A. Poker Classic (LAPC), and no-limit hold’em final tables at the Wynn Classic and World Poker Challenge. He also won a preliminary $1,500 no-limit hold’em event at the LAPC, his first tournament victory of the year. He has won $253,504 in prize money and 1,276 POY points in 2009.

One other player who has scored five final-table appearances in 2009 is Michael Noda, who has been the most dominant player in Las Vegas so far this year. He began his early 2009 success by winning a $500 no-limit hold’em event at The Venetian’s Deep-Stack Extravaganza I. He banked $48,316 and captured 384 POY points for the win, and went on to make two more final tables at The Venetian before the tournament series concluded. Noda then moved on to win two tournaments at the 2009 Wynn Classic; the first was a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event that awarded him $55,563 in prize money and 432 POY points, and the second, his biggest win of the year, came in a $2,000 no-limit hold’em event, which was good for $107,402 in prize money and 408 points. He now has $228,684 in prize money and 1,537 points for the year, and is in 22nd place on the leader board.

Look Out: Daniel O’Brien

Daniel O’Brien has cashed in three of the last four World Poker Tour events. He finished 33rd in the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic in December 2008, 24th in the L.A. Poker Classic in February 2009, and 11th in the Bay 101 Shooting Star in March. He keeps inching closer to his first major tournament win while posting some of the most consistent results in tournament poker these days. O’Brien came closest to his first big win when he finished third in a $2,000 no-limit hold’em event at the 2008 World Series of Poker, and because that event attracted a massive field of 1,344 players, the $198,132 payday was by far the largest of O’Brien’s career. He now holds $445,017 in career tournament winnings.

O’Brien got his start in poker during his freshman year of college. A viewing of Rounders was all the incentive he needed to start playing the game. He began dominating games in his dorm, and then branched out to other dorms on campus. He was no longer invited after a while, because he built his bankroll up to $1,500 courtesy of his classmates. “I had $1,000 rolled up in twenties in the back of a picture frame. I thought I was Matt Damon,” said O’Brien as he laughed about the memory.

In 2003, he jumped into the online arena on PartyPoker. He started playing tournaments, and then moved into cash games, to build his bankroll up to $150,000 by the end of college. He took a job as a trader on Wall Street straight out of college, and in the summer of 2006, he took $10,000 out of his bankroll of $35,000 and played in the WSOP main event. He finished in 349th place and took home $34,636 for his efforts. In 2007, he went to the Series again, and came home up $5,000 for the trip. “I knew I could make a lot of money playing cards, and going back to work after two weeks in Vegas was awful — so I told my boss I was out,” he said.

O’Brien then drove to California and started to play in smaller tournaments at Commerce Casino while he grinded online to build his bankroll. He returned to the WSOP in 2008, and his big third-place finish gave him the freedom to play more tournaments at the $10,000 buy-in level. He has yet to make his first million-dollar score, but he keeps putting himself in a great position to capture that first major tournament title. “I’m definitely under the radar,” said O’Brien. If he keeps up his current cash rate, he won’t be under the radar much longer.