Online Poker — OPOY Update, Jan. 30, 2009

It’s been exactly one month since the 2009 Card Player Online Player of the Year race began, and some players are starting to separate themselves from the pack. This was a great week for online professionals, who claimed deep finishes and wins in nearly every major OPOY-qualifying tournament.

You can click on the links to read about the Sunday Majors and the $1K Roundup.

Since last week’s story, a new player has emerged in the top spot, making it the fourth consecutive week in a row that someone different has held the lead. Thanks to an amazing week, Scott "stpauli111" Hall came from nowhere to jump into first place. Hall started off his week with a runner-up finish in the $300 buy-in on PokerStars. The next day, he took third in the $100 rebuy on Full Tilt. Then his biggest score of the year came when he won the $1K Monday for $92,000. He has six final tables on the year and five of them are top-three finishes.

Matt "cwp394" Ross had another solid showing this week, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from dropping one spot to second place in our standings. Ross cashed five times and won the $90,000 guarantee on Full Tilt to keep the pace.

Slowly creeping up the rankings was Mohsin "chicagocards1" Charania (pictured above right), who added three cashes, including a fifth-place finish in the Absolute Poker $100,000 guarantee. It was his fifth final table of the year.

Winning this week’s award for being the most consistent player is Aditya "Intervention" Agarwal, who moved into fourth place. Agarwal had three final tables this week, cashing in two $1K buy-in tournaments and winning the PokerStars $200 rebuy on Sunday.

One-time leader Hafiz "hafizzle" Khan (pictured left) had a quiet week, cashing only once for 36 points in the Full Tilt $150 rebuy. He remains in fifth place.

The rest of the top 10 is made up of one time big Sunday Major winners. Those players are all virtually tied for seventh place in the rankings.

Here’s a look at the full leader board.