Canterberry Poker League · Tournament #23

Six Knockouts Gets You Third

Lee Ugarte took out half the field and finished off the podium; the man who won made four, and the man who came second made none at all.

Twelve players went home and Lee Ugarte sent six of them — half the field, and every one of them in the closing stretch. He finished third. Rick Mazza won it with four, in three hours and forty-six minutes, closing out an eight-and-a-half-minute heads-up match for $130.

It is Mazza’s fourth league win and his first in twelve months, and it arrives after two quiet nights to open the season — eleventh in June, thirteenth in July.

The man across the table was Eric Denny, second for $70 without recording a single knockout. The reigning champion reached the final two of a tournament he barely touched — the seventh time this league has sent somebody to heads-up without a knockout to their name, and the second time it has been Eric, who did exactly the same thing on the league’s opening night in June 2008.

Lee Ugarte takes $40 for third, and Dan Myers completed the money in fourth for $20 — his first cash since September 2009.

Where the money went

The undercard

Warren Mervin bubbled in fifth. Tom Buzbee was the first man out after an hour and thirty minutes. In between, five of the six players who finished eighth or lower were sent home by the same man — Lee cleared out the bottom of the table and then could not finish the job at the top.

The bigger picture

Three tournaments, three different winners, and the leader still has not won one. Kjell Wygant is on 49 points off a second, a second and a sixth — twelve clear of Warren, and five league tournaments into his career without a victory.

Canterberry Poker League #23 — Friday, August 13, 2010. 13 entrants, four paid from a $260 prize pool. Points shown are the league standings after three tournaments of the 2010-11 season.