Who's Number One?
2008-01-10 17:12:23
By:
Gene Bromberg
This is probably of more interest to Phil Hellmuth or Annie Duke than you or I, but
Bluff Magazine recently revised their criteria for awarding their Player of the Year award. I can't honestly say that I know precisely how Bluff (or CardPlayer) determined who their players of the year were, but there seems to be some debate about which arbiter has the best system.
Bill Edler won POY at Bluff, while CardPlayer awarded the title to David "The Dragon" Pham. Both magazines use complicated criteria and weighting to determine how many points you get for a specific result. I always thought that the way you figured out in poker who was most successful was to determine who ended up with the most money, as that's rather the point of playing poker (other than the sheer fun of it, of course). Problem is that if you employ my system the winner of the WSOP Main Event would pretty much always win player of the year, unless one of the close runners-up posted some monster results elsewhere. And with all due respect to Jerry Yang, I don't think a system that crowns him as Player of the Year is a good one.
So let's toss my bright idea aside and look at how Bluff will figure all this out. You get points for playing in any WSOP event (in the U.S. or in Europe), any WSOP Circuit event, any WPT or EPT or APPT tournament, or the Aussie Millions or Monte Carlo Millions. And then any other big, unannounced tournaments that pop up turning the year will also be included.
Sounds simple, but then you have to factor in the buy-in, the size of the fields, and your finishing position. Here you'll need a spreadsheet to keep track of things because there's a sliding, weighted scale you use to multiply by the number of points you win...I think it's best not to worry about that unless you post a few big results early in the year. At that point, I would hire a CPA to track your progress and have a professional deduce what you need to do to end up on a magazine cover at the end of the year.
Permalink:
http://www.ultimatebet.com/poker-blog-post/Whos-Number-One/2410
