Canterberry Poker League · The 2016-17 Season

David Doole Wins a Second Title, Five Years After the First

The heads-up record fell twice, the field record fell, and the record for the quickest exit was cut by thirteen minutes.

Ten tournaments produced eight different winners, three league records, and a champion who had already been one. David Doole is the 2016-17 League Champion on 98 points from seven appearances — the second man to win this league twice, five years after he first did it.

How it went

Steve McLean opened the season, and Mike McEvoy finished second in it — his third consecutive runner-up finish across two seasons, in a career that by then ran to thirty tournaments without a win. He made no knockouts doing it.

Eric Denny won July for his tenth, joining Josh Reel at the top of the all-time list, and Warren Mervin made it three men on ten in October. That trio has now converged three times — on seven, on eight, and on ten.

Paul Coffman, the reigning champion, won August for his third and January for his fourth. Doole took September in the first heads-up match this league had ever pushed past forty minutes — forty minutes and twenty-five seconds against Greg Howell, who had made six knockouts to Doole’s one.

Greg won November, and then January went longer still: Paul and Rick Mazza spent forty-seven minutes and ten seconds heads-up, taking nearly seven minutes off a record that was four months old.

February brought twenty players and a first win for Josh Martin in his fifth tournament — and after the longest finish in league history, one of the shortest: a minute and forty-six seconds. March brought twenty-two, more than this league had ever seated, and Doole’s second win of the year from it.

The finale went to Brig Coupe in the third tournament he had ever entered, on a night when Duane Barone was eliminated after nineteen minutes and twelve seconds — thirteen minutes quicker than anybody had ever gone out before.

The season, tournament by tournament

League Champion

David Doole takes the title and the trophy on 98 points from seven starts — two wins, a third and a sixth among his five counting scores. He finished seventh on the final night, which was enough to hold off Paul Coffman by eight.

He won this league in 2011-12 as well, which makes him the second man to take it twice after Josh Reel. Nine seasons have produced seven different champions.

Steve McLean was third on 89 and Warren Mervin fourth on 88, both a single good night from the top. Duane Barone played all ten and finished sixth without winning one.

The Annual

Three weeks after the finale, twenty-one players sat down for the 11th Annual Denny Poker Tournament and played for ten hours and forty-three minutes, an hour longer than any Annual before it. Josh Reel won $1,015 out of a record $2,865 pool — the first four-figure prize this event has paid — for his second Annual.

The heads-up match took fifty-nine minutes and forty-three seconds, against Brig Coupe, three weeks after Brig won his first league tournament. Brig took $710. Fourteen rebuys went in, more than the Annual has ever taken. Doole, the new champion, finished seventh.

The verdict

Three marks moved this season and two of them concerned the same thing: how long two players take to finish. The league record went from thirty-nine and a half minutes to forty and a half in September, then to forty-seven in January. The Annual, which keeps its own book, produced one just under an hour in May.

The other two records were opposites. Twenty-two players sat down in March, the most this league has held; a month later a man was gone in nineteen minutes, the quickest anyone has left.

And the champion managed none of it. Doole won twice, played seven of ten, made one knockout on the night he set the first heads-up record, and finished seventh in the tournament that confirmed him.

2016-17 Canterberry Poker League — ten tournaments from June 10, 2016 to April 14, 2017. 29 players took a seat during the season. League standings count each player’s best five scores.