Season Review · 2021

The First Season: Eight Winners, One Champion, and a Man Who Could Not Lose or Win

Ten tournaments, $9,200 in prize money, and a new league that outgrew the old one in a year.

The Canterberry Poker League ran for twelve seasons and closed in April 2020. Nine months later fourteen players sat down at a new one, and by December 2021 Eight Deuce had put more money on the table in a single season than Canterberry ever managed — $9,200 across ten tournaments, against a Canterberry best of $5,780.

The champion

Jeff Holderman is the first Player of the Year. He won it with 351.89 points and one tournament win, which was the first Eight Deuce night he ever played, back in February. Everything after that was near misses: second in March, second in April, third in May, second in June, second in August.

The near misses kept coming after the season closed. He was second in the Annual in November, having made nine knockouts — more than anyone has ever made in that event — and second in the Tournament of Champions in December. Six second-place finishes in one year, one win, and the title.

He also finished the regular season as its leading earner on $1,460, from nine starts.

Ten tournaments, eight winners

Only Rick Mazza and Eric Denny won twice. Eric’s two came back to back in July and August and were the most one-sided nights of the year: eight knockouts in the first, seven in the second, and in July every player who finished second through sixth was eliminated by him.

The man who never won

Shawn Miller made 21 knockouts in 2021, one fewer than Eric Denny and more than anyone else. He finished second twice, third once and fifth once, and took $780 home. He has now played nine Eight Deuce tournaments and twelve at Canterberry — twenty-one — without winning one.

The final standings

The Annual and the Tournament of Champions

Paul Coffman won the fifteenth Annual on November 6 for $720, his first after two runner-up finishes and eight appearances. It was the first Annual ever played in the fall — the previous fourteen all ran in late spring — and its fourteen entrants and six rebuys made $1,800.

Josh Reel won the first Tournament of Champions on December 3, beating the seven other men who had won something during the season for $400.

What the year showed

Nineteen players took part. Five of them — Rick Mazza, Paul Coffman, Lance Cain, Josh Reel and Angela Cain — played every one of the ten.

The money moved further than anything else. Canterberry took twelve seasons and never paid a winner more than $288; Eight Deuce paid $345 on its first night and $460 twice by October, put four figures on the table in May and again in October, and never assembled a pool under $800. Rebuys, which the old league never allowed, added twenty-three entries across the season and a good deal of that money.

Add the Annual and the Tournament of Champions and 2021 handed out $11,800. The second season begins in January.

2021 — the first Eight Deuce season. 10 tournaments, 19 players, $9,200 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.