Canterberry Poker League · Tournament #71
Paul Coffman Knocks Out Nine and Then Needs Forty Minutes More
His first league win, and the longest heads-up match this league has ever played — against a man who had not knocked anybody out.
Thirteen players had to be eliminated to open the 2015-16 season and Paul Coffman eliminated nine of them. It is the second-highest total in Canterberry Poker League history, behind only the eleven Steve Drown made five months ago, and it delivered Paul the first win of his thirteen-tournament career — $85, in four and a half hours.
Almost forty minutes of that was the finish. He and Steve McLean played heads-up for thirty-nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, the longest this league has managed in seventy-one tournaments, beating the thirty-eight minutes and fifty-three seconds of July 2013 by thirty-six seconds. Mac took $55 for second without making a single knockout all night.
Neither did Charlie Drotar, third for $30, or Lori Mazza, fourth for $20. Paul knocked out all three of them himself, along with the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, eleventh and thirteenth-place finishers.
Where the money went
| Player | Prize | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Coffman | $85 |
| 2 | Steve McLean | $55 |
| 3 | Charlie Drotar | $30 |
| 4 | Lori Mazza | $20 |
The undercard
Andrew Shier bubbled in fifth with three knockouts — every elimination that was not Paul’s except one. Lance Cain played his first league tournament and came eleventh. Rick Mazza was the first player out after an hour and twenty-three minutes.
The bigger picture
The scoring has been rebuilt again. A win is worth 24 points where last season it was worth 50, and the standings now count each player’s best five scores rather than the best eight. Nine tournaments are left and a player needs only five of them to fill a card.
That is the second scoring change in two years, and it cuts the other way from the last one: with five scores counting instead of eight, turning up every month is worth less than it was, and a good night is worth more.
| League standings — after #71 | Points | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Coffman | 24 |
| 2 | Steve McLean | 20 |
| 3 | Charlie Drotar | 17 |
| 4 | Lori Mazza | 14 |
| 5 | Andrew Shier | 11 |
Canterberry Poker League #71 — Friday, June 19, 2015. 14 entrants, four paid from a $190 prize pool. First tournament of the 2015-16 season; standings count each player’s best five scores.