Canterberry Poker League · The 2017-18 Season

Ten Tournaments, Ten Winners

Nobody won twice all year. It has never happened before, and the season ended with the man who won tournament #1 winning #100.

Ten tournaments produced ten different winners. No season in this league’s ten years had managed more than nine, and none had ever gone a full year without somebody winning twice. Andrew Shier is the 2017-18 League Champion on 103 points, and his was one of the ten.

How it went

The buy-in went up to $30, the first change since the league began. Eric Denny opened the season by winning his eleventh and taking the all-time lead alone; Warren Mervin caught him in September with his own eleventh.

Jeff Reichwein won July in the second league tournament he had ever played — the fourth man to win inside his first two appearances, and all four of those have come in the last six years.

August ended an eight-and-a-half-year wait. Mike McEvoy had finished second four times and third four times in thirty-four tournaments since January 2009 and never won; he knocked out five of eighteen and did. In March, Andrew Shier did the same thing from three runner-up finishes in thirty tournaments — and that win put him top of the table with one to play.

Greg Howell took October, and Rick Mazza won November after fifty-three months, which was the longest gap between two wins the league had recorded. It held for five months.

Duane Barone won January, nine months after being eliminated in nineteen minutes — still the quickest exit in league history, and he owns the second-quickest too. Lee Ugarte won February by knocking out seven of fourteen, exactly half, and took the season past seven different winners for the first time ever.

Then the hundredth. Twenty-five players sat down, more than this league had ever seated, and Mike Conner — who won tournament #1 in June 2008 in front of six — won it. One hundred and eighteen months between his two wins, more than double the record Rick Mazza had set in November. He knocked out the six men who finished behind him in the money, second through seventh.

The season, tournament by tournament

League Champion

Andrew Shier takes the title and the trophy on 103 points from all ten tournaments. He cashed four times — a fifth, a third, a second and the win — and finished outside the money in the other six, including a thirteenth on the final night when the title was already close enough to hold.

He is the eighth different champion in ten seasons, and he arrived at it having never won a league tournament before March.

David Doole was second on 95 from eight starts and Paul Coffman third on 90. Charlie Drotar finished seventh on 87 after leading the standings through five of the ten tournaments — he cashed four times and has not won one since April 2013.

The Annual

Four weeks after the finale, eighteen players sat down for the 12th Annual Denny Poker Tournament and Brig Coupe won it for $780 — a year after losing the longest heads-up match this event has played and taking $710 for second. He has entered two Annuals and finished first and second.

Eric Denny was second for $440 and Mike Conner third, four weeks after #100. Andrew cashed in fifth, which makes three of the last four champions to cash here after a stretch when almost none of them did.

The verdict

The number is ten, and what makes it strange is who it belonged to. Two of the ten winners were men who had spent years failing to win one: Mike McEvoy in his thirty-fifth tournament, Andrew Shier in his thirtieth. Another was Mike Conner, whose only previous win was the first tournament the league ever held. A fourth, Jeff Reichwein, had played twice.

And the champion is the same story. Andrew Shier had never won anything here until the ninth tournament of the season, then won the league.

2017-18 Canterberry Poker League — ten tournaments from June 9, 2017 to April 13, 2018. 30 players took a seat during the season. League standings count each player’s best five scores.