Season Review · 2024

Warren Mervin Wins His First Here, Then Wins the Season

Sixteen years after his first league title, and thirty-one tournaments into this league without a win.

Warren Mervin won eleven tournaments at Canterberry and the very first league title that place ever awarded, in 2008-09. He then played thirty-one Eight Deuce tournaments across three years without winning one. In 2024 he won two of them and took the Player of the Year on 367.36, seventy-two points clear.

The champion

His first came in March, at the thirty-second attempt, in the longest tournament the league had played to that point. His second came in the October finale and settled the title on the night. In between he was second in September and fourth in the Annual, and he finished the year as the league’s leading earner on $1,450 with six cashes from nine starts.

Ten tournaments, eight winners

Eight different winners, matching 2021 and 2023. Only Warren Mervin and Lee Ugarte won twice.

The year of the knockout leader losing

The oddest pattern of 2024 ran through its first four months. In January Mike McEvoy made seven knockouts and finished second. In February Lee Ugarte made eight — more than anyone has ever made in an Eight Deuce tournament without winning it — and finished second; Juan Lopez beat him having made one. In April Mike Conner made five and finished second.

Lee Ugarte still led the league in knockouts for the year with 16, and finished second in the standings.

Justin Vaughn’s run

Justin Vaughn was in the last two of four consecutive tournaments — winning #34 in April, then runner-up in May, June and July — and added a third place in September. Five top-three finishes in six starts left him third in the standings on 292.61, twenty-five points off second and his best season.

The final standings

The Annual and the Tournament of Champions

David Doole won the eighteenth Annual on November 16 for $740, having rebought on the way — his first Annual, in a year when he did not win a Friday tournament at all. Steve McLean rebought twice and still finished second for $460.

Lee Ugarte won the Tournament of Champions on December 1 for $575, the largest prize the league has paid outside the Annual. That event paid only two places this year, and Lance Cain took the other one.

What the year showed

The prize money came to $8,900, a shade under 2023 and the second year running it has drifted down. Eight of the ten tournaments came in below $1,000, but February matched the league’s records for both field size (eighteen) and prize pool ($1,200), and the two ten-player nights in June and July were the only really thin ones.

The tournaments themselves got longer. September’s ran five hours and thirty-three minutes, the longest the league has played, and March’s five hours twenty-three was the longest before that — two records inside seven months. August produced a forty-seven-minute heads-up match, the third longest on record.

Eighteen players took part. Eric Denny and Lee Ugarte played all ten. Add the Annual and the Tournament of Champions and 2024 paid out $11,560. The fifth season begins in January.

2024 — the fourth Eight Deuce season. 10 tournaments, 18 players, $8,900 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.