Series Review · World Series of Parker 2017–2018
Five Events, Five Winners, and a Title Decided by Nine Points
The first World Series of Parker went to a different man every night — and the one who won the most of it did not win the trophy.
The idea was a series of tournaments played in games nobody around here plays on a Friday night. Five events across ten months, a different game each time, and a trophy at the end of it for the man who accumulated the most across the whole run. What it produced was five different winners in five attempts, and a finish so close that the three men at the top of the table were separated by eleven points.
A different game, a different winner
| Game | Date | Winner | Field | First prize | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-1 | Omaha Hi/Lo | June 24 | Eric Denny | 6 | $85 |
| 1-2 | Razz | August 25 | Rick Mazza | 8 | $95 |
| 1-3 | 7 Card Stud | November 3 | Josh Martin | 10 | $120 |
| 1-4 | Heads Up Tournament | January 26 | Greg Howell | 8 | $105 |
| 1-5 | H.O.R.S.E. | March 23 | Lee Ugarte | 6 | $110 |
Five events and five names. Eric Denny took the opening Omaha Hi/Lo night in June against a six-handed field. Rick Mazza won the Razz event in August. Josh Martin beat the largest field of the series, ten players, at 7 Card Stud in November. Greg Howell won the heads-up bracket in January. Lee Ugarte closed it out at H.O.R.S.E. in March, the only event of the five where anybody rebought.
The best player in the series did not win it
Greg Howell finished second in the first event and second in the second event. In the third he was fourth. Then in January he won the heads-up tournament outright, a seven-round round robin feeding an eight-man bracket, knocking out seven players on the way — more than anybody managed in any other event of the series, and in a format where every knockout has to be earned twice over.
Across the five events Howell led the series in prize money with $225 and in knockouts with 16. Nobody else was close on either count. He finished second in the standings.
Why the trophy went to Eric Denny
The 2017-2018 series was scored on a combined table — the five World Series events, the Canterberry season that ran alongside them, and the 2018 Annual, all totalled together. On that basis the trophy is not for who played the best poker at Razz; it is for who played the best poker over ten months across everything on the calendar.
| Combined standings — WSOP, Canterberry and the Annual | Events | Points | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eric Denny | 16 | 420.44 |
| 2 | Greg Howell | 15 | 411.41 |
| 3 | Andrew Shier | 15 | 409.23 |
| 4 | Lee Ugarte | 15 | 343.19 |
| 5 | Rick Mazza | 14 | 321.26 |
| 6 | Charlie Drotar | 12 | 319.60 |
Eric Denny won it by 9.03 points over Howell, with Andrew Shier a further 2.18 back. Three men inside eleven points over sixteen tournaments is as tight as this group has ever finished anything. Denny had won the opening event in June and been runner-up to Howell in the heads-up bracket in January — two results against the man he beat, one each way.
He is the first WSOP Champion.
What the series was for
Fourteen players entered at least one event and ten of them cashed. The games were the point: Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, 7 Card Stud, a heads-up bracket and H.O.R.S.E., none of which anybody had played competitively here before. Fields ran between six and ten, small enough that a bad hour ends your night and a good one puts you in the money.
The heads-up event paid all eight players — the only tournament of the series where nobody left empty-handed, and a consequence of its round-robin format rather than the usual prize ladder.