Canterberry Poker League · The 2010-11 Season
Decided by Five Points
Eight different winners, a forty-four-point lead that shrank to nothing, and a champion who spent the last night going out ninth.
No Canterberry Poker League season has finished this close. Kjell Wygant is the 2010-11 League Champion on 140 points, five ahead of Lee Ugarte — and he took the title in his first full season, having played only two league tournaments before it.
How it went
Warren Mervin opened it with his first win in fifteen months, and Dawn Buzbee took July for her second — five months after becoming the first woman to win one of these. Rick Mazza won August on a night when Lee Ugarte put out half the field and finished third.
Then Kjell, who had been second, second and sixth without winning anything, won September and October back to back and opened a lead of forty-four points. In October the season looked over.
Brian Albers won November on the fourth league night he had played since 2008. And in January the race restarted: Lee made eight knockouts, a league record, ground out a thirty-seven-minute heads-up match, also a record, and took the biggest field the league had assembled to that point. Duane Barone won February at the seventh attempt, in what was also his first cash.
Lee won again in March, with Warren making six knockouts and finishing second, and the gap was down to ten with one night to play. On the last Friday Eric Denny won the tournament, Lee finished sixth, and Kjell went out ninth — which was enough by five.
The season, tournament by tournament
| Date | Field | Winner | First prize | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #21 | Jun 11 | 14 | Warren Mervin | $150 |
| #22 | Jul 9 | 13 | Dawn Buzbee | $125 |
| #23 | Aug 13 | 13 | Rick Mazza | $130 |
| #24 | Sep 10 | 13 | Kjell Wygant | $130 |
| #25 | Oct 15 | 15 | Kjell Wygant | $140 |
| #26 | Nov 19 | 17 | Brian Albers | $145 |
| #27 | Jan 14 | 20 | Lee Ugarte | $170 |
| #28 | Feb 11 | 15 | Duane Barone | $125 |
| #29 | Mar 11 | 15 | Lee Ugarte | $125 |
| #30 | Apr 15 | 11 | Eric Denny | $100 |
League Champion
Kjell takes the title and the trophy on 140 points from all ten tournaments — two wins, five cashes, and a card that went outside the top eleven exactly once. That consistency is the whole margin: he and Lee both won two tournaments, and Lee played one fewer night.
Warren Mervin was third on 117 from eight appearances. Below them the season produced the deepest table this league has had: Mandy Denny sixth and Dawn Buzbee seventh, with Kelly Kruegel eleventh in her first season.
| League standings — final, 2010-11 | Points | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kjell Wygant | 140 |
| 2 | Lee Ugarte | 135 |
| 3 | Warren Mervin | 117 |
| 4 | Rick Mazza | 98 |
| 5 | Eric Denny | 93 |
| 6 | Mandy Denny | 89 |
| 7 | Dawn Buzbee | 86 |
| 8 | Dan Myers | 73 |
| 9 | Charlie Drotar | 69 |
| 10 | Josh Reel | 66 |
The Annual
Five weeks after the finale came the 5th Annual Denny Poker Tournament, and every number was a record: twenty-one players, a $1,050 pool, six paid, nine hours and twenty minutes, and $430 to the winner.
That winner was Brian Albers, who had also won a league tournament in November — two victories inside six months from a man who plays about twice a year. Jim TenKate was second on his first appearance. Kjell finished twentieth of twenty-one, which makes it three seasons running that the champion has arrived in May and left with nothing.
The verdict
Eight different winners from ten tournaments, the most this league has managed since its first season, and thirty-one players through the door. Two of the eight — Brian Albers and Duane Barone — had barely played it.
And the number that frames the year: forty-four points clear in October, five points clear in April.
2010-11 Canterberry Poker League — ten tournaments from June 11, 2010 to April 15, 2011. 31 players took a seat during the season. League standings are the sum of every score a player recorded.