The Card Player Player of the Year was announced and the winner is David Pham. This will be his second year getting this award. He beat out Jonathon Little, who was the only one that could have caught Pham for the title by winning the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Classic that is going on right now at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Little was eliminated out of the tournament earlier and so was out of the running for the Player of the Year.
The first time that the Pham won the Player of the Year award was in 2000. The only other people who have won the award more than once are Men Nguyen, who has won the award four times, and T.J. Cloutier, who has won the award two times.
Back in August is when Pham became the leader in the Player of the Year race. He took the lead away from J.C. Tran. The way that Pham took the lead was by taking second in the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker tournament. Even though Pham didn’t win the tournament, he earned 1,600 points, which is what put him in the lead.
His total points that he earned for the year is 6,562. There were many people who weren’t that far away from him in the race for the Player of the Year. Both Tran and Little made a good effort in trying to catch Pham in December but as was shown could not catch him for the award. To stay in the lead, Pham needed to have a win at a tournament in December. He did just that on the 5th in the Five-Diamond Poker Classic. This tournament got him 1,152 points, which made his lead even bigger. Pham had to place at least second in this tournament because otherwise Tran would have taken the lead because he won a tournament five days later.
Pham made a nice amount of cash for the year. He earned $1.8 million for the year playing in poker tournaments. He placed in cash spots 18 times and made the final table 11 times. Pham ended up winning four tournaments for the year. Pham had a pretty good year and deserves to be the Card Player Player of the Year.