Canterberry Poker League · The 2012-13 Season
Nine Winners, and Only One of Them Twice
The season handed out nine different champions in ten nights. The man who won two of them won the league.
For the second year running, ten tournaments produced nine different winners — as open as this league has ever been. Josh Reel is the 2012-13 League Champion on 100 points, and he is the only man who won more than once.
How it went
It started with the strangest result of the year. Scott Dishong sat down for his first Canterberry Poker League tournament in June and won it, beating a fifteen-man field in an eighteen-minute heads-up match — the longest of the season, in his first appearance.
From there nobody could hold the thing down. David Doole took July out of the season’s biggest field, twenty players. Warren Mervin won August, Lee Ugarte September, and Eric Denny October in ninety-eight seconds of heads-up play.
November belonged to Steve McLean, and it closed a circle. Mac had made seven knockouts on the opening night in June and finished second; in November he made seven again — nobody managed more in any tournament all year — and won for the first time in nine attempts.
Seven tournaments in, seven different men had won, matching the deepest this league has ever opened a season. Then Josh ended it. He won January, and a month later he won February as well — only Eric Denny in 2009 and Kjell Wygant in 2010 had ever won two in a row here.
March went to Erik Treiber, a year and a half and thirteen tournaments into his career, over Mike Conner, whose one previous win was tournament #1 in June 2008. Charlie Drotar closed the year by taking the fiftieth tournament in front of eighteen players — and Josh finished eleventh that night and won the league anyway.
The season, tournament by tournament
| Date | Field | Winner | First prize | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #41 | Jun 8 | 15 | Scott Dishong | $140 |
| #42 | Jul 13 | 20 | David Doole | $170 |
| #43 | Aug 10 | 15 | Warren Mervin | $140 |
| #44 | Sep 14 | 16 | Lee Ugarte | $145 |
| #45 | Oct 12 | 14 | Eric Denny | $135 |
| #46 | Nov 10 | 17 | Steve McLean | $150 |
| #47 | Jan 11 | 13 | Josh Reel | $120 |
| #48 | Feb 9 | 16 | Josh Reel | $140 |
| #49 | Mar 8 | 16 | Erik Treiber | $140 |
| #50 | Apr 13 | 18 | Charlie Drotar | $160 |
League Champion
Josh Reel takes the title and the trophy on 100 points from nine tournaments — two wins, five cashes, and not one finish worse than thirteenth. He missed only October. It is his first League Championship, and it makes five different champions in the five seasons this league has run.
Warren Mervin was second on 91 with a win and five cashes of his own, and David Doole third on 88 from all ten tournaments. Mike Conner came fourth on 83 having played only seven — three fewer than Doole — on the back of two second places and two more cashes.
| League standings — final, 2012-13 | Points | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Josh Reel | 100 |
| 2 | Warren Mervin | 91 |
| 3 | David Doole | 88 |
| 4 | Mike Conner | 83 |
| 5 | Steve McLean | 81 |
| 6 | Tom Buzbee | 77 |
| 7 | Scott Dishong | 75 |
| 8 | Rick Mazza | 72 |
| 9 | Charlie Drotar | 71 |
| 10 | Lee Ugarte | 71 |
The Annual
Three weeks after the finale, fifteen players sat down for the 7th Annual Denny Poker Tournament and played for nine hours and three minutes. Brian Albers won it for $295 and the trophy, his second Annual after 2011 — only Joe Johnson had taken it twice before.
He beat Skippy heads-up, which was rough on the loser: Skippy had knocked out eight of the fifteen entrants that day, more than anyone has managed at any Annual. Rick Mazza was third, Erik Treiber fourth and Dawn Buzbee fifth.
In the four Annuals since 2009 the newly crowned champion has cashed exactly once — Eric Denny, fifth in 2010. Josh sidestepped the question by not entering.
The verdict
Two league records were matched this season and neither was beaten: nine different winners in a year, and seven to open one. Three men won a league tournament for the first time — Skippy on debut, Mac at the ninth attempt, Erik Treiber at the fourteenth.
And the champion is the answer to the season’s own question. When nine different people win, the league goes to the one who turned up nine times out of ten and never had a bad night.
2012-13 Canterberry Poker League — ten tournaments from June 8, 2012 to April 13, 2013. 29 players took a seat during the season. League standings are the sum of every score a player recorded.