Season Review · 2022
Lee Ugarte’s Year
Four wins, two seconds, and a title settled with a tournament still to play.
The league’s first season produced eight different winners in ten tournaments and a champion who won once. Its second produced one man who won four, and he had the Player of the Year mathematically won before the last night was played. Lee Ugarte finished on 417.67, a hundred and twelve clear.
The champion
Lee played all ten. He won #14 in April, #16 in June, #18 in August and #19 in September, and he had already been second in January and second in March before the first of them. He led the league in knockouts with 25 and in money with $1,920, and he was the first player ever to rebuy and still win an Eight Deuce tournament.
By September the arithmetic was done: after #19 nobody could reach him, and he went out fourteenth in the finale without it mattering.
Ten tournaments, seven winners
| Winner | Date | Field | First prize | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #11 | Steve McLean | January 14 | 14 | $390 |
| #12 | Justin Vaughn | February 11 | 18 | $460 |
| #13 | Shawn Miller | March 11 | 17 | $480 |
| #14 | Lee Ugarte | April 8 | 16 | $430 |
| #15 | Paul Coffman | May 13 | 14 | $365 |
| #16 | Lee Ugarte | June 10 | 15 | $405 |
| #17 | Lance Cain | July 8 | 15 | $365 |
| #18 | Lee Ugarte | August 12 | 10 | $240 |
| #19 | Lee Ugarte | September 16 | 10 | $245 |
| #20 | Juan Lopez | October 14 | 15 | $405 |
First wins
Three men won a tournament for the first time in their lives in 2022, and two of them had waited a long while.
Shawn Miller took #13 in March, after twelve tournaments at Canterberry and eleven here without one; he had led the league in knockouts the previous season and finished second twice. Lance Cain took #17 in July at his fifty-ninth attempt across the two leagues. Justin Vaughn took #12 in February at his sixteenth.
March’s tournament was also the biggest the league has staged: seventeen players, four rebuys, a $1,200 pool and $480 to the winner, all three still records.
The defending champion
Jeff Holderman won the 2021 Player of the Year with six cashes in nine starts. In 2022 he played seven tournaments and cashed in none, was first out of the Annual, and finished the season fifteenth of fifteen. It is the emptiest year anybody has had in this league.
The final standings
| Player of the Year — 2022 final | Played | Points | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lee Ugarte | 10 | 417.67 |
| 2 | Paul Coffman | 10 | 305.63 |
| 3 | Justin Vaughn | 8 | 271.45 |
| 4 | Josh Reel | 8 | 257.64 |
| 5 | Steve McLean | 7 | 250.58 |
| 6 | Lance Cain | 10 | 242.43 |
| 7 | Shawn Miller | 8 | 224.94 |
| 8 | Juan Lopez | 7 | 220.47 |
| 9 | Eric Denny | 10 | 186.89 |
| 10 | Jason Dailey | 6 | 178.07 |
The Annual and the Tournament of Champions
Josh Reel won the sixteenth Annual on November 12 for $790, his third, which ties Joe Johnson’s record. Thirteen players and nine rebuys made a $1,980 pool and a day that ran just under ten hours. Jeff Ferguson finished second, by a distance the best result of his career and still not a win.
Steve McLean won the Tournament of Champions eight days later, beating the season’s seven winners plus Josh Reel and Eric Denny for $445.
What the year showed
The prize money held almost exactly steady — $9,520 against 2021’s $9,200 — but it was distributed very differently through the year. February and March each broke the record for the biggest pool; August and September drew ten players apiece and produced the two smallest tournaments the league has held.
Nineteen players took part again. Five of them — Warren Mervin, Paul Coffman, Lance Cain, Lee Ugarte and Eric Denny — played every one of the ten. Warren’s year is its own small story: fifteen Eight Deuce tournaments without a cash, then fourth place in each of the last three.
Add the Annual and the Tournament of Champions and 2022 paid out $12,380. The third season begins in January.
2022 — the second Eight Deuce season. 10 tournaments, 19 players, $9,520 in regular-season prize money. Player of the Year counts each player’s best eight scores. The Annual and the Tournament of Champions are separate events and do not count toward it.