Canterberry Poker League · Tournament #8

Dan Myers Gets His First

Six players paid, three of them tied on the same rung, and the man who won the very first Denny Poker Tournament finally wins one of these.

Sixteen players, six of them paid, and five hours and twenty-four minutes of poker before it was settled. Dan Myers won it — $135, two knockouts, and an eighteen-and-a-half-minute heads-up match to close.

He arrived at this league with a Denny Poker Tournament trophy from May 2007 already on the shelf, which is more than anybody else here owns, and until Friday he had nothing at all to show for seven months of Canterberry nights. Now he has both.

Matt Moriarty played his first league tournament and lost heads-up, taking $80 for second with four knockouts — twice the winner’s tally and the most of anybody. That is a sixth debutant to reach the final two in four tournaments.

Rick Mazza was third for $50. And then the tournament did something it has not done before: Chris Johnson, Mike Conner and Warren Mervin all finished fourth, and all three collected $18.

Where the money went

The undercard

Six paid from sixteen pushed the bubble deep, and it fell to Josh Reel in seventh. Dawn Buzbee recorded her first league knockout on the way to eleventh. Mike Short was the first man out after an hour and forty minutes — the third time this season he has led the field home, and nobody else has done it more than twice.

The bigger picture

Eight tournaments, seven different winners, and only one man has won twice. Warren keeps the lead on 77 points, four ahead of Chris Johnson and seven ahead of Mike Conner — the same three men who have been trading the top of this table since the autumn, now separated by less than a good night’s work.

Two tournaments left, and every one of the three can still be caught by the others.

Canterberry Poker League #8 — Friday, February 20, 2009. 16 entrants, six paid from a $319 prize pool. Points shown are the league standings after eight tournaments of the 2008-09 season.