Canterberry Poker League · The 2011-12 Season
Nine Winners From Ten Nights
The most open season this league has had, won by a man who took one tournament all year and simply never stopped cashing.
Ten tournaments produced nine different winners — more than any season this league has run. David Doole is the 2011-12 League Champion on 128 points, and he won exactly one of them.
How it went
Three players took a first league win in the opening four months. Rick Mickaliger opened the season with his, at the tenth attempt. Charlie Drotar took August at the nineteenth, having cashed seven times without ever winning. And Doole took September at the sixteenth, beating Charlie heads-up in two minutes and seven seconds when the two of them arrived at the final two as first and second in the standings.
In between, Rick Mazza won July in under three minutes of heads-up play, and Tom Buzbee won October — thirty months after his previous one. Dawn Buzbee took November for her third, beating Warren Mervin in a tournament where Warren put out six of the fourteen.
That became the pattern of the winter: the man who cleared the room kept losing it. Lee Ugarte and Kelly Kruegel made ten of the thirteen eliminations between them in January and Lee Ugarte took it; Mickaliger and Tom Buzbee made eleven of thirteen in February and Mickaliger won his second.
March produced the strangest night of the year. Ashley Lee knocked out eight of the fifteen, equal to the league record, and when it got heads-up she and Warren cut a deal — the money halved at $95 each, the win going into the book under Warren’s name. He had made a single knockout all night.
By the finale three men sat inside four points. Doole settled it by reaching the final two, lost that to Josh Reel, and took the title regardless.
The season, tournament by tournament
| Date | Field | Winner | First prize | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #31 | Jun 10 | 11 | Rick Mickaliger | $98 |
| #32 | Jul 15 | 15 | Rick Mazza | $118 |
| #33 | Aug 12 | 13 | Charlie Drotar | $117 |
| #34 | Sep 23 | 17 | David Doole | $141 |
| #35 | Oct 14 | 14 | Tom Buzbee | $126 |
| #36 | Nov 11 | 15 | Dawn Buzbee | $120 |
| #37 | Jan 13 | 14 | Lee Ugarte | $126 |
| #38 | Feb 10 | 14 | Rick Mickaliger | $121 |
| #39 | Mar 16 | 15 | Warren Mervin | $95 |
| #40 | Apr 13 | 17 | Josh Reel | $148 |
League Champion
Doole takes the title and the trophy on 128 points from all ten tournaments — one win, six cashes, and the standings lead from November to the end. He had played twelve league tournaments before this season without winning any of them.
Charlie Drotar was second on 109 and Tom Buzbee third on 104. Rick Mickaliger is the season’s oddity in fourth: two wins, more than anybody, from only six appearances — four fewer than the champion.
| League standings — final, 2011-12 | Points | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | David Doole | 128 |
| 2 | Charlie Drotar | 109 |
| 3 | Tom Buzbee | 104 |
| 4 | Rick Mickaliger | 100 |
| 5 | Eric Denny | 91 |
| 6 | Josh Reel | 79 |
| 7 | Warren Mervin | 79 |
| 8 | Lee Ugarte | 78 |
| 9 | Kelly Kruegel | 71 |
| 10 | Mandy Denny | 67 |
The Annual
Five weeks after the finale, seventeen players sat down for the 6th Annual Denny Poker Tournament and played for eight hours and fourteen minutes. Tom Buzbee won it for $340, adding the trophy to the best league season of his career.
Mandy Denny was second, which makes her last three Annuals a first, a third and a second. Doole finished fifteenth of seventeen — four years running that the champion has arrived in May and left with nothing.
The verdict
Nine winners from ten tournaments is as open as this has ever been, and three of the nine were winning for the first time. Two of them — Charlie Drotar at the nineteenth attempt and Doole at the sixteenth — had been cashing for years without converting.
And the number that frames the season: the champion won once. The man with the most wins finished fourth.
2011-12 Canterberry Poker League — ten tournaments from June 10, 2011 to April 13, 2012. 27 players took a seat during the season. League standings are the sum of every score a player recorded.