Canterberry Poker League · The 2019-20 Season

The Last Season, and the Best One to Go Out On

Eric Denny won three tournaments and the title. The league closed after twelve seasons with its biggest fields, its biggest prizes and its longest finishes.

The Canterberry Poker League played its twelfth and final season, and went out at full size: $5,780 across the ten tournaments, an average field of twenty-one, and the four largest prizes in its history all paid between June and April. Eric Denny is the last League Champion, on 142 points.

How it went

The buy-in went to $40, up from $30, and the money moved with it. Lee Ugarte won the opener for $235, more than any league tournament had ever paid; Duane Barone beat that in July with $250; Juan Lopez took $245 in January; Eric Denny took $275 in March; and the last tournament paid $288. The standings also moved from a best-five card to best six.

Dawn Bjork won in August, six years to the day after her previous one — the second-longest gap between two wins the league recorded, and her fifth. All five of her wins are also every tournament this league ever had won by a woman.

Brig Coupe took September. Then Eric won October and November back to back, which took him past Josh Reel and Warren Mervin and ended a three-way tie at the top that had held, on and off, for five years.

Juan won January in his eleventh tournament, fourteen months after making seven knockouts and losing. Josh Martin won February in a forty-nine-minute heads-up match — the longest the league had played — against Paul Coffman, after the two of them had already agreed to split the money at $150 each with the win still on the line.

Five weeks later the record went again. Eric beat Steve McLean in fifty-two minutes and forty-two seconds, so the league produced its two longest finishes in consecutive tournaments. On the same night Jeff Reichwein led the season by seven points and was the first player out.

The season, tournament by tournament

League Champion

Eric Denny takes the title and the trophy on 142 points from all ten tournaments — three wins, a fourth, and four more finishes inside the top ten. He is the first man to win three in a season since he won four in 2009-10, and it is his second League Championship, ten years after his first.

Jeff Reichwein was second on 121 from all ten. He cashed five times, led the standings from August to March, and never won a tournament — he finished fifth, fifth and fourth in his first three and never bettered a third all year.

Paul Coffman was third on 114, and Juan Lopez and Shawn Miller tied on 113.

The Annual

Eight weeks after the finale, nineteen players sat down for the 14th Annual Denny Poker Tournament — the first ever played with no league behind it. Rick Mazza knocked out eight of them, equalling the most anybody has made there, and won $920 at his fourteenth attempt. He had played every Annual since 2007 and never won one.

Jeff Reichwein was second for $520, Juan Lopez third, Eric fourth and Warren Mervin fifth. The Annual started a year before the league and is going on without it.

Twelve seasons

One hundred and twenty tournaments from June 2008 to April 2020, twelve seasons, seventy-six players. It began with six around a table and ended with twenty-five.

Eric Denny leaves as the all-time leader in wins, with fourteen, and in prize money, with $2,775. Josh Reel and Warren Mervin finish on eleven each, Lee Ugarte on eight.

Nine different men held the League Championship. Josh Reel, David Doole and Eric each won it twice.

2019-20 Canterberry Poker League — ten tournaments from June 14, 2019 to April 17, 2020, the last season the league played. 32 players took a seat. Standings count each player’s best six scores. Point totals across seasons are not comparable: the scoring formula changed several times.