The Annual · 5th Denny Poker Tournament
Brian Albers Wins the Other One Too
Twenty-one players, nine and a quarter hours, and the biggest prize pool this tournament has assembled — taken by a man who plays about twice a year.
Every number here is a record. Twenty-one players, a $1,050 pool, six places paid, nine hours and twenty minutes of poker and $430 to the winner. Brian Albers took all of it, with five knockouts and a seven-minute heads-up match to close.
Six months ago he won a Canterberry Poker League tournament in the fourth league night he had played since 2008. He has now won both things this group runs, and he did it inside half a year having barely turned up for either.
The man across the table was playing his first Annual. Jim TenKate made four knockouts and took $240 for second.
Mandy Denny, the defending champion, was third for $135 without a knockout all day — nine hours of staying out of the way. Lee Ugarte took fourth and $105. And fifth was shared: Charlie Drotar and Eric Denny finished level and took $70 each, Eric having made three knockouts to Charlie’s none.
Where the money went
| Player | Prize | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brian Albers | $430 |
| 2 | Jim TenKate | $240 |
| 3 | Mandy Denny | $135 |
| 4 | Lee Ugarte | $105 |
| 5 | Charlie Drotar | $70 |
| 5 | Eric Denny | $70 |
The undercard
Rick Mickaliger bubbled in seventh with two knockouts. Three players made their first Annual appearance alongside the runner-up: David Shelly finished tenth, Kevin Klieba seventeenth and Lori Mazza eighteenth. Rick Mazza was the first man out after three hours and twenty-one minutes — which on a nine-hour day is a long afternoon to end with nothing.
The bigger picture
Five Annuals, four different winners, and a tournament that has more than doubled since 2007: nine players and a $450 pool then, twenty-one and $1,050 now.
It arrives five weeks after the closest Canterberry Poker League season yet, decided by five points in favor of Kjell Wygant. He came here and finished twentieth of twenty-one. That is three years in a row the newly crowned champion has walked into May and gone home with nothing, and this is the most emphatic version of it — eleventh, then fifth, and now second to last.
The 5th Annual Denny Poker Tournament — Saturday, May 21, 2011. 21 entrants, no rebuys, six paid from a $1,050 prize pool.