The results are in! The asterisk in the title is because previous years are ranked by the finishing place of the folks on the final table, but the results for this year are by starting stack on the final table until the tournament’s done.
Years ago, I had a discussion with someone about how they thought there would never be another Main Event winner over the age of 40. That was just before Qui Nguyen won it at 39 and a couple of years before Hossein Ensan took it down at 55. Adam Walton has a significant chip lead going into the day. He’s 40.
[UPDATE] Walton did make it to Day 2 of the Final Table, but not for long. Congrats to Daniel Weinman!
Not a huge amount to report for May, I was saving up my poker time away from home for a trip to the World Series of Poker in early June (I’m already back), and there was some family stuff going on, so I only played one tournament outside the house.
Ignition NLHE Jackpot Sit-and-Go
I played 71 of these in May, a little more than two per day. Won in 26, which puts my cashing rate at 37%. Since these only pay double the buy-in most of the time, that’s not enough to be profitable, since the break-even point is an unsustainable 50% cash rate (even with only three players that’s not really realistic.What makes them at all profitable that eight of my wins were 5x multipliers, so I won 76 buy-ins for my 71 entries, a whopping 7% profit.
Vic’s Patio NLHE
This is one of the venues for the home game I started in, which is still a $30 tournament with a $5 add-on. I made it down to 3-handed (out of 8) after a re-buy, then lost a hand where I was ahead to Daryl and left with a cash but no profit.
Beaverton Quarantine
Friday night PokerStars Lite (and sometimes Zoom) games with friends of a friend. They do two or three games a night, and I took second in the NLHE tournament I played, then won the PLO8 game they called after that, and a NLO8 game the next week. Three for three on the month.
So May was marginally profitable. That was soon to change!
I played about 40 of these little games this month, cashing 18, for an ROI of 28%, because 5 of those cashes were in 5x payouts instead of the default 2x. Without the multiplier payouts, my ROI would have been negative. +11 buy-ins for the month, an average of 0.268 buyins/game.
I hadn’t watched “Volunteers” for maybe 20 years. Still an incredibly funny movie.
— Poker Mutant, #Jordistan (@pokermutant) April 18, 2023
Final Table $20K GTD NLHE First Friday
Nothing much to say about this. Had to do a rebuy half an hour in when I got it in on the flop against bottom set with a pair of aces and a nut flush draw. Made it to around 50th place.
Played the @FinalTablePDX First Friday $20K GTD and was starting to make a comeback w a third of the field left when my QQ ran into KK and I was left with only 1.5bb. Didn’t play @PortlandMeadows $300 Big Stack Saturday but they posted the payouts. Easter Poker! pic.twitter.com/bhxg8a9mmT
— Poker Mutant, #Jordistan (@pokermutant) April 9, 2023
Portland Meadows HEROS
Meadows got about 50 entries into this order-modified HORSE tournament, which I played because I’m trying to get some more live experience in limit games before I head to the WSOP in June. Hopefully, I’ll do better in Vegas! I did place 1st in a PokerStars play money HORSE tournament!
I haven’t had to pay a bring in in ~40 hands of Stud-style games so far.
— Poker Mutant, #Jordistan (@pokermutant) April 23, 2023
The running joke on thePoker In the Ears podcast and PokerStars Sunday Million and EPT livestreams is that it’s always #TheYearOfRomania, but I think that we can safely call 2023 #TheYearOfJordison. Coming off a win for the GPI Global Poker Awards Breakout Player early in March for a phenomenal run in 2022, Jordison and conspirator Jackie Burkhart put together the feel-good event of the year, by sponsoring (initially) eight—and so far, thirteen—veterans to play in the WSOPSalute to Warriors tournament, with packages including buy-in and expenses. She’s been doing lots of podcast appearances the past several months, including Kara Scott’s Heart of Poker at the end of the month. I can’t keep up.
Nomination/selection process is live!!
Any additional donations received between now and mid June we will use to award last minute seats to veterans that are already in Vegas and/or split up any extra money between the vets for incidental expenses (taxi,food etc) https://t.co/77jP1ETFQj
Got my Poker Tracker 4 running again. I used to be good at this IT stuff. There was some sort of issue on my Mac, the database was hinky at first, then after I got that sorted out, none of the select menus would work, which made slicing and dicing the data extremely difficult. Finally managed to import a couple years’ worth of Ignition Casino tournaments, which is good, because my old go-to for showing off hands—ShareMyPair—is no more.
Beaverton Quarantine
This little group typically plays two or three $20 or $25 tournaments on Friday night via the PokerStars Home Games play money client and Zoom (though PokerStars now has a beta video conferencing feature). They tend to be one-and-a-half tables at most, with the first game (usually NLHE) being larger and a smaller number of players for the later game or games. I usually miss the first one, but try to jump into the others when I get the opportunity. I played a PLO8 bounty tournament as my first game of the month (out 7 of 8), and my last game was a straight PLO bounty, where I took 2nd place (of 8 entries) and a couple of bounties.
Ignition Casino 2-Seat GTD NLHE Irish Poker Open Satellite Qualifier
This was my last gasp effort at making it to the Irish Poker Open, which is going on right now (click on the EPT link above to watch it on YouTube). Didn’t manage to come close.
Last Frontier Casino $25K GTD NLHE
After some success at Last Frontier early in the year in LHE, I decided to try my hand there at NLHE and ran into a bit of a buzzsaw. Ran KK into AA just over an hour in and lost the equivalent of a starting stack. With the slower structure, I still had 40bb. Managed to get to the add-on break with 5K and got an extra 15K, then ran it up to 23K (57bb by then).
18500 at the end of the first level. My buddy BP takes better photos than I do—or maybe I’m just more photogenic. pic.twitter.com/aylGyDTITy
— Poker Mutant, #Jordistan (@pokermutant) March 5, 2023
The player on my left had been grumbling about my play most of the tournament for the first two hours after I’d raised early and called an oversized re-raise with KJs. He had TT and lost a chunk of chips early on. Two hours in, I limped K4s from the HJ, he raised to 3.5bb and SB called. I called and the flop his KKJ. SB and I checked, he bet 5K into 7K and on the assumption that #BlockersAreReal, I shoved for about 30bb. Both of them folded, he said “KJ again?” and I told him “No, king-four.” He snorted, “Figures.”
Karma, as they say, is a bitch, and poker karma is a whole pack of bitches. I picked up KK on my very next hand and raised, as one does. BB—the guy I’d run my KK into when he had AA early on—makes the call. K24 flop. He check-calls my 3.5bb bet. 4 on the turn, he checks, I bet 8bb and he calls. A on the river, He checks, I bet 8bb again and he raised to18bb. I called very reluctantly, hoping he’d over-valued two pair maybe, and he shows K3s. I managed to last about 40 minutes after that.
Ignition Casino $500 GTD PLO8 Turbo
Just 34 hands. Out well before the money.
Ignition Casino $2 NLHE Jackpot Sit-n-Go
Only won one of these of the three I played (yes, I know, that’s the random distribution) and I missed the 5x multiplier.
Ignition Casino $3K GTD NLHE PKO Turbo
Twenty percent of the buy-in goes to the bounty pool in this tournament. I managed to take down a couple of bounties, made it to the money, but never really caught wind and was pretty short-stacked by the time we got to two tables. Went out 18th when I open-shoved 6bb with Qs9s and the blinds had Ac9h and AdJd (Mutant Jack!). Flopped an open-ended straight draw, but the board double-paired and I min-cashed.
Ignition Casino $35K GTD NLHE
I’d never played this nightly tournament before but enjoyed it briefly. Never managed to get any traction above the starting stack and went out with the Portland Nuts (QcTc) v AdQd, making two pair on the river against the rivered flush.
Ignition Casino $5K GTD NLHE Thousandaire Maker
I hadn’t played one of these for nine months, and I figured I’d take a couple shots. They pay approximately 7% of the fields flat $1K on an $82 buy-in. My aces got cracked on the 20th hand of the first one when I raised UTG, got three callers, and jammed on the flop, only to have J9 with a gut-shot draw call off more than half of his stack and hit. So, nowhere near the money on that one. Did a little better on the second go, but still never made it further than the middle the field.
Coming Up
No Irish Poker Open for me, no Wildhorse Spring Poker Round-Up. There’s a lot of action here in Portland with people gearing up for the summer poker series in Vegas. I’ve already taken a stab at one of Final Table‘s First Friday $20K GTD events (they ran a special Fifth Friday $20K at the end of March). They’re running a $50K GTD on April 15th, but I’m going to miss that due to family obligations. There is a $500 buy-in Freezeout there on April 23rd, but it’s up against Portland Meadows‘ HEROES tournament and I have a hard time passing up HORSE variants. Meadows is also running a NLHE/PLO mix game on the 13th that I’m going to try to make it to. And they’ve got a Progressive Knockout with a $400 buy-in on the 29th. Then Last Frontier is running another one of their $25K GTD tournaments on April 30. And that’s just the stuff I’m trying to fit into my retired from poker guy schedule.
I also need to make my reservations for the first weekend of the WSOP. Limit Hold’em and Seven-Card Stud await!
Really, the most I can say about this tournament is that it was great to briefly see so many of my old compatriots from the Portland Players Club days, and to get a chance to play at the same table as Jeremy Harkin, for a change.
I schlepped out to Portland Meadows on the bus after work on a Friday. With the PacWest Poker Classic coming up at the end of the month, I wasn’t planning on playing much in February, but I really couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Regrettably, on the very first hand, I got into a hand with Joe Brandenburg, who, naturally, had the nuts when I had the second nuts, so I started hand 2 with half a starting stack.
I lasted about 100 minutes, but only through the benefit of a re-entry, which I only bought after going out to catch the bus home and just missing it. That stack mostly went to Jeremy.
Ignition Casino Jackpot Sit-n-Go NLHE
I played twelve of these three-person sit-n-go tournaments, and variance was kicking my butt on both ends. I actually got seated in four tournaments that had 5x payouts, but I didn’t cash in a single tournament.
Jason Brown
My old pal Jason Brown was in town for a few days from Seattle. Any long-time poker player in Portland knows Jason; we used to play what seemed like every day at Portland PLayers Club. I’ve missed him a number of trips he’s made back to town, but we finally got a chance to hang out for a while!
Ignition Casino Irish Open Sub-Qualifier NLHE
Played two of these step 1 tournaments (a win gets you into the qualified, and a win in the qualifier gets you into the satellite for a $4K package to the Irish Poker Open). One bullet in the first of these, two bullets in number two. Didn’t cash either one.
Ignition Casino Irish Open Qualifier NLHE
There were two levels of qualifiers for the IPO on Ignition. Both were competing for various guarantees of $270 satellite tickets. Most were $25+$2.50 turbos, but there were some $20+$2 non-turbo events, as well. Dropped two buy-ins in the turbo, then two in a $20 event and managed to win a satellite seat
In case anyone thinks Dara isn't at least some kind of poker demi-god, my entreaty and his "good luck" did work. It's a lot easier than reading the books, though you should buy them for the shrine even if you don't plan to read them.https://t.co/XfE56CpbMCpic.twitter.com/Nq2y7V7WyA
Ignition Casino Irish Poker Open 5 Ticket GTD NLHE Satellite
Never really managed to get any traction in this satellite, barely climbed above 150% of starting stack and finished in the middle of the pack. There was a more than 50% overlay on the tournament, with only 37 total entries and 80 as the breakeven point for the guaranteed packages ($1200 for the IPO Main Event entry and $2800 in travel expenses).
Ignition Casino $500 GTD NLHE KO Turbo
I prefer to play the Omaha games for fun, but I decided to try a bounty NLHE tournament for a change. Things went well from the beginning, with me nearly tripling up in the first ten hands, then doubling that up against another player who’d gotten off to a good start when I flopped a set of jacks and they turned a set of threes and thought they were golden. Things faltered a bit later in the game, but I took enough bounties before we eve3n hit the money to pay off the entry fee, and I placed 8th of 97 entries for a small cash.
Ignition Casino $5K GTD NLHE Turbo
No luck here, I got in late with 12bb and was out about 15 hands later.
Ignition Casino $500 PLO8 Turbo
These little tournaments that run about 9pm Pacific are some of my favorites. I feel less stressed about late-regging them than I do NLHE games. That said, the first one I played, I came in with 10bb and was out in four hands. The second one, I started a bit earlier andfinished in 3rd place out of 78, which was pleasing. Extra satisfying because it happened the day after we’d gotten our power back after a branch broke the connector line to our house.
Ignition Casino Irish Open Qualifier NLHE
As the month wound down, I played three more qualifiers to try to get the Irish Open pacvkage. Dropped a total of three buy-ins in two of the Turbo edition (which ran more often than the other) without success. Once again, it was the cheaper, slower qualifier where I won the ticket, which I know, it makes no sense.
Ignition Casino Irish Poker Open 8 Ticket GTD NLHE Satellite
I was supposed to be in Lincoln City for the PacWest Poker Classic the last weekend of February. It’s been five years since I had my biggest-ever cash , at Chinook Winds in February, and I was jonesing to beat that, but after two days of no power and barely getting things back to normal Friday afternoon, I didn’t really feel like abandoning my wife for four days—despite the house not being 50 degrees even with the woodstove going—was a politic move. Plus, I’d planned to take two days off for the series, but I had to take two days to deal with electricians and keep the fire burning. So I welcomed the opportunity to take advantage of another heavily-overlaid Irish Open satellite. And it was, but again, I never managed to get a purchase, and busted out after a couple of hours.
Ignition Casino Irish Poker Open 5 Ticket GTD NLHE Satellite
I was torn about playing this next-to-last satellite. First, I didn’t have a satellite ticket to play it, so I’d need to buy in directly. Second, it started about a quarter-hour after I got off work, and I typically walk home, plus, I was cooking dinner, so it’d be a bit deeper in the tournament than I wanted by the time I was able to join. Still, there’s almost three hours of entry in these satellites. So I got home and made dinner, then jumped in about Level 8, with 75bb. The downfall here was I made a horribly bad call just nine hands in, too-cautiously laying down a king-high flush draw from the SB on a paired flop. Never managed to get above starting stack. There is one more satellite in March, but I’m not sure whether I want to try for it at this point, or wait for my next opportunity to go to Ireland.
Who am I kidding?
Coming Up
I’ve been seriously thinking about driving to Lincoln City for the Main Event of the PAC West, but I could stay in town and play the $20K GTD at Final Table this Friday, or I could go up to Last Frontier for their $25K on Sunday.
I didn’t play much poker to start off the fourth year of my poker retirement, but it was reasonably successful, probably because of that.
Last Frontier Casino $10K Guarantee Limit Hold’em
I was both intrigued and a little worried when I saw poker room manager Chris Canter post the notice for this one last month. Washington State’s poker room regulations only allowed limit for a number of years, and it was Last Frontier’s bread-and-butter, so I was expecting some serious LHE crushers to show up for this, but I went anyway.
Never played much of it myself, except in HORSE and other mixed game rotations, and it’s definitely not my strongest game in HORSE (like every other HORSE player, my strongest game is Razz).
I got off to a fast start, despite the presence at the table of some long-time players who were re-bonding after not seeing each other at the tables for a while. They included Kevin Erickson, who was the runner-up for an LHE bracelet at the 2021 WSOP. Fortunately, he was balanced to another table after a short while. I was leading the table for a time.
Three hours in and I was still above the pack—sometimes considerably so. In the fourth hour, my stack hit more than double the tournament average, though I’d dropped down to about one-and-a-half average after that. Ran into a former co-worker of my late brother-in-law, who I’d met at the tables in the past.
The stack managed to stay healthy as we approached the money with just three tables. As I noted on Twitter, the 12th-place prize was less than the buyin+entry.
When we consolidated to two tables, I ended up next to Korey Payne, who said hello, but I knocked him out dirty A7 > AK not long after the money bubble broke.
Also got to catch up a bit with a different Kory, one of the regulars from my Portland Players Club days, who’d won the $25K GTD NLHE at Last Frontier a couple of weeks before. He took over the chip lead at the final table as the guy who came to the final with a bu=ig stack managed to blast it away, first to me, then to Kory. We started whittling away at the shorter stacks. I picked off 6th with the Robbie Jade Lew hand (J4o) when I had over 300K on the 15K big blind and just had to call 10K for his all-in.
When we hit three players, Kory had the lead by a good bit, and the other player and I were swapping 2nd and 3rd. Then I pulled in a chunk of chips, and non-Kory proposed an even chop, which I was rather surprised Kory—with more than twice his stack and half again mine—agreed to. I agreed, naturally, and #3 and I went to the payout desk. Kory went into the field of cash players and did some consulting with a friend, coming back to tell me his friend had suggested he should have held out for an ICM deal. Personally, I think that would have been a better option, rather than readily agreeing to the even chop immediately, but I just ran the numbers through Icmizer, to show him the difference.
Beaverton Quarantine NLHE Bounty
For some reason, my long-time home game never went online during the worst of the pandemic (I first got the inkling it was going to be bad when one of the guys in the group who works in virology at OHSU backed out of a game we had scheduled in March 2020). But Kate, one of the folks I met through that group, invited me last year to a far-flung Friday night game that had gotten together via PokerStars Lite Home Games and Zoom. They typically play two or three $20-$25 games—usually NLHE or PLO8—get enough players for one or two tables, and Matt handles the money. All very friendly. I don’t usually get into the Zoom conference because of where I’m playing from, and I usually miss the first game, but this night I caught the Bounty tournament, busted just short of the money, and didn’t pick up a single bounty.
The Game $10K Guarantee Big O and 1/2 NLHE
I misremembered the start time of this tournament. I was running a little late, I thought, until I turned into the parking lot of The Game and it was almost empty. I should have turned around and skipped it. When I went in, there was a single cash table running and I learned I was two hours early. I thought I’d read for a couple hours, but the urge to play got the best of me and I grabbed one of the empty cash game seats. I hovered around my buy-in for an hour or so, then got it in bad with AK < KT on a KTx flop and the two pair held. Players on the button could call some games, as well, so there were some of the inevitable bomb pots, and 5-2-2, which is a double-board Big O game that’s popular with degenerates.
Speaking of which, the Big O tournament lasted less time than I waited for it to start (at least for me), because I kept insisting on risking things with just low draws. I could have just lit that money on fire (see below).
Beaverton Quarantine Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Bounty
The second game in the last BQ poker night for the month was somewhat successful, I took 2nd place (out of 6, plus a rebuy) and two half-bounties (split-pot knockouts).
Snowman Num-Num
For years, a piece of They Might Be Giants 20th anniversary swag was my go-to hoodie for playing poker. It featured a piece of art from their first EP: a cartoon snowman warming their mitts over a fire of burning money. It just somehow seemed appropriate.
Poker Mutant goes to the 2012 Pendleton Poker Round-Up Main Event.
I was wearing it the night I won a seat to the Pendleton Poker Round-Up Main Event at Players Club (and my wife had an unrelated heart attack the next morning). I was wearing it when I had my largest-ever cash, at Chinook Winds, placing 3rd out of a 462-entry field (how is that five years ago?).
But given tat TMBG has been around forever now, the 20th-anniversary hoodie is itself two decades long in the tooth, with the black faded and the screen printing cracked and the seam on the hood torn several inches. They hadn’t ever revived the design for a hoodie.
Until this winter, when they announced a red version. Which I promptly ordered two of. I didn’t need a daily-use poker hoodie any longer, but I do walk a couple miles to work and back, and I can always use a couple extras during the winter (I did get a very nice PokerStars hoodie when I was on the Poker In the Ears podcast a couple years ago).
The package arrived quickly and when I got home I opened it immediately, only to have that familiar sausage-squeezed-into-casing feeling when I slid the first of the new hoodies on. Had I put on (more) weight? Was XL the new XXL? No, the invoices and packaging said XXL, but the tag on the hoodie itself said XL.
So that seems like a big screw-up, probably on the part of the clothing/silkscreen contractor, and probably something that wasn’t particular to my order, which was confirmed when I contacted the seller to swap them out.
So, if you play against me anytime this month, it’s the old, ratty hoodie you’ll be seeing.
Another round of poker returning to semi-normal took place last week, with two of the last three venues running tournament series in the Pacific Northwest scheduling them during the same week, naturally.
The South Sound Championship at Little Creek Casino west of Olympia ran from 21–25 September, with four events, featuring a $750 Main Event. The final table for the field of 95 included 3-time WSOP bracelet-winner Rep Porter (currently #12 on the Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard),
Photo from Tracie Osborn via NW Poker Facebook Community
Meanwhile, down on the Oregon Coast, the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic ran from 17-25 September, with 19 events. I was only able to make it down a couple days, and busted two 6-Max bullets, min-cashed the freezeout that night, then got knocked out of the HORSE tournament halfway through. (congrats to John Gribben for chopping that one). The 6-Max had kind of a big overlay, but I think most of the other events did reasonably well. Some of the early results are already on Hendon Mob, thanks to Kevin Mathers, who was pulling them from the leaderboards posed by Chinook Winds, though those only have the top 20 results, so they won’t be complete until all the information is submitted.
Photo from Forrest Auel via NW Poker Facebook Community
Then, of course, there was Allen Kessler making a big deal out of the $10 dealer appreciation that doesn’t appear on the chart butis on each structure sheet. I’m just glad he didn’t notice the Main Event had a $25 dealer appreciation.
Wow this is egregious.
It's only $10, but how do casinos still pull this stuff on players after they've arrived? pic.twitter.com/mXjPgA2dY9
Andersen outlasted 3rd-place finished Ryan Laplante to get heads-up with Michael Wang, who made three of the Stairway to Millions event final tables, winning two of them. Players who cash in a Stairway to Millions event win their prize as well as a ticket to the next level of the tournament series “stairway,” with players finishing in the top 3 places earning the ability to skip up two levels. Unless, of course, the venue decides to renege on the guarantee and cancel the final levels.
This is Ronan’s 2nd-largest cash, and it’s followed closely by another win in a Seniors event four days later that was just under the reporting limit.
Congratulations to Patrick Ronan of Girdwood, AK who was the winner via a three-way chop in our DeepStack Extravaganza Event #07 $600 NLH MonsterStack $40,000 guarantee on 9.2.22
I wouldn’t normally have included the 10th-place finish here because it was below my guideline for ROI, despite that min-cash being twice my lifetime earnings on Hendon Mob, but considering how Davies just keeps putting more and more space between the #1 and #2 spots on the Leaderboard, I think it’s a worthy exception.
The lines for winners are marked with circles; the second-place finisher is marked with a box. Roll over the chart for last names and places for each year (excepting 2020).
If you haven’t seen your name in the Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard lately, you might wonder where you fit in the grand scheme of things. If you have seen your name on the Leaderboard, why are you wasting your time here on the Northwest’s most boring poker blog? You should be out playing poker.
At this point (17 June 2022), the Leaderboard has exactly 7,501 entries on it; one for every player in the Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, Alberta, and Alaska leaderboards at Hendon Mob that has $3,000 or more in recorded poker tournament earnings. There are at least a few players with double entries, but 7,500 players, more or less.
Top 1 — $15,000,000
There’s one player way above the rest of the pack, and that’s Seth Davies with just under $15 million—and by “just under”, I mean within $25K, so I expect by the time I’ve published this, Davies will have eclipsed that mark. It’s nearly twice as much as the nearest contender.
Number 2 — $8,000,000
Scott Clements has maintained the #2 spot for a while, with a bit more than $8 million. Over a million dollars separates Clements from the next person on the Leaderboard.
A Third — $7,000,000
#3 is Shawn Buchanan, at just under $7 million, nearly equidistant between Clements and Kevin MacPhee at #4.
Four at $5,000,000+
Places #4 to #7 are currently ranged between $6 million and $5.3 million. They’re currently MacPhee and Chris Brewer, essentially tied at the top end, with James Romero and Dylan Linde close to each other on the lower end.
Five(?) at $4,000,000+
Technically, there are five players (#8 to #12) with seven figures starting with a four, but one of them is Annie Duke who hasn’t been a PNW player for a lot of years.
$3,000,000+
Five more players have $3 million to $4 million dollars. That’s places #13 to #17.
$2,000,000+
Nine more players have part of a third million in earnings. Everyone above #26.
$1,000,000+
51 PNW players have more than a million in lifetime recorded tournament earnings. That’s about two-thirds of a percent of the players tracked by the Leaderboard.
$725,000+ #75–#52
$530,000+ #100–#76
$395,000+ #150–#101
$325,000+ #200–#151
$260,000+ #250–#201
$222,000+ #300–#251
$190,000+ #350–#301
$172,000+ #400–#351
$150,000+ #450–#401
$137,000+ #500–#451
$118,000+ #600–#501
$100,000+ #700–#601
$88,000+ #800–#701
$77,000+ #900–#801
$68,500+ #1000–#901
$56,000+ #1200–#1001
$47,400+ #1400–#1201
$40,000+ #1600–#1401
$34,900+ #1800–#1601 *
$30,400+ #2000–#1801
$22,400+ #2500–#2001
$17,200+ #3000–#2501
$13,500+ #3500–#3001
$10,000+ #4197–#3501
* Yes, that is my bracket. On the plus side, I’m in the top 25% of players on the PNW Poker Leaderboard.
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2†Mutant (@pokermutant) December 17, 2021
Not a lot of live poker action from me since the World Series of Poker trip I made in October, though I’ve kept up a busy schedule of low-level online Omaha tournaments and Jackpot Sit-n-Go games on Ignition Casino. I played (and min-cashed) the November First Friday $20K GTD at Final Table—look for their new schedule starting 1 January, and barely lasted a level at Portland Meadows Oregon State Big O Championship in mid-December.
I started this blog when I was 49 years old. back at the start of the month, I turned 60. My wife and I went to New York City for my birthday, getting out just befoe the omicron coronavirus variant took over. Got back to PDX at 10:30pm and at 7am the next morning I was on a flight to Hawaii to spend a few days with my father , who was over there using up condo points before the end of the year. That’s Kiluaea behind us in the shot. If you go up there at night, the lava in the crater makes that white smoke look bright red.
PNW Poker Leaderboard
This edition of the Leaderboard includes some October and November straggling results from Canadian casinos. Like these…
Prabakaran Sivabalasundaram from Calgary won the Casino Yellowhead/Pure Poker Tour #1 PLO Bountyback at the end of September, beating out 176 other entries in the C$440 buy-in tournament. Sivabalasundaram climbs two hundred spots to #926.
Edmonton’s Andy Truong came in 2nd in the Yellowhead PPT #3 NLHE out of 326 entries. It’s good for a fifteen spot bump to #226.
Alberta-based Curtil Burlet comes into the Leaderboard hot, with a biggest-ever cash (it only their third) that lands them at #3092, for the runner-up position in Yellowhead/PPT #4 NLHE Bounty. (Remember that bounty cash is not reflected in Hendon Mob records and therefor does not affect the PNW Poker Leaderboard.) Calgary’s Weston Pring won the event, going from #347 to #309. Pring was featured in the last Leaderboard update; they came in 101st in the WSOP Main Event.
A C$1,100 buyin back in early October in Edmonton (470 entries and a prize pool of US$353K), the six top finishers all made it to the Leaderboard. Haven Werner of Calgary took 6th, moving him from #531 to #470. Fort St. John, British Columbia’s Bernice McLennan posted a biggest cash in 5th, jumping all the way to #2079 from #4428. Amir Khan, another Calgarian, took 4th, which combined with a 3rd-place finish in a Wynn Fall Classic $100K GTD NLHE in mid-November (404 entries, $237K prize pool) jumps Khan 1400 places to #917. Surrey, British Columbia’s Mike Kim goes up seventy-four places to #317 by taking 3rd. Out of Whitecourt, Alberta, it’s john Hanna debuting at #1160 on the Leaderboard with a 2nd-place finish. Finally, on the top, is Kyle Ho from Burnaby, with a best-ever cash and a move from #243 to #186.
Jordan Banfield from Calgary won the Deerfoot Inn Fall Super Stack #1 NLHE Deepstack in Calgary, an event that drew 385 entries back in early November. The prize pool was over US$88K. It’s Banfield’s only cash so far, and they enter the Leaderboard at #2622.
John Nielsen from Sylvan Lake, Alberta placed 4th in this event (354 entries, US$135K pot) back in early November, going up more than 100 places on the Leaderboard, to #849. Coming in at 2nd was Ivan Milanovic, with a best-ever cash (only their fifth on record), good for a first-time ranking of #1990. The champion was Kelly Gall from Calgary, with their biggest cash so far and a jump of fifteen hundred spots on the Leaderboard, to #1284.
Redmond’s Dominick Nguyen found some time to play poker on the East Coast mid-November and won the 432-entry Boston Billiard Club & Casino Veterans Day NLHE tournament for a 2nd-ever cash and a new spot on the Leaderboard at #2586.
Daniel Lefebvre of Alberta was the 5th-place finisher in this event of nearly 400 entries and a US$300K prize pool. Lefebvre moves three hundred spots on the Leaderboard, to #981 (3 squared and nine squared!) Tyler Hurman from Calgary got their largest-ever cash in 4th, and climbs from #832 to #663. In 3rd was Kaan Becer out of Vancouver, whi gets an increase of twenty places to #193. And Takuma Bergeron from Coquitlam, Alberta got a best-ever cash in a deal for 2nd place, which raised them from #5503 to #1056.
back down to the States, James Battenberg from Issaquah nabbed 4th at a Wynn Fall Classic $100K GTD NLHE that had over three hundred entries and a $148K prize pool. Battenberg moves fifteen hundred places on the Leaderboard, to #2655.
Christopher Brewer hit the jackpot on consecutive days at the Aria High Roller series. On November 16th, Brewer came in 3rd of 43 in Aria High Roller 39 NLHE, then 1st at Aria High Roller 40 NLHE the next day (albeit with only 16 entries). It’s enough to move from #16 to #14 on the Leaderboard.
Catching up to where the last Leaderboard left off on WSOP events, Dylan Wilkerson played World Series of Poker #79 NLHE Poker Hall of Fame Bounty. This new event awarded a bounty for each Poker Hall of Fame player eliminated, with the amount equal to the year they were inducted. There were bounties for eleven HoF entries, plus new WSOP spokesperson Vince Vaughn. All of the bounties were eliminated on Day One. Wilkerson placed 9th out of 468. By the way, Wilkerson’s WSOP profile now lists him as living in San Francisco, so no telling how much longer Hendon Mob will have him as a Washington State player; then he’ll be off the Leaderboard and everyone will move up!
There were 1,921 entries in the $800 WSOP #81 NLHE Deepstack, and Maxwell Sabel of Sun Valley, Idaho made it past 1,911 of them for a 10th-place finish and a first recorded Hendon Mob cash. Sabel makes a debut on the Leaderboard at #3127.
On the other end of the WSOP spectrum, #1-ranked Seth Davies placed 4th of 33 in the WSOP #82 NLHE Super High Roller, where the buy-in was $250K. Davies continues to increase the gap between #1 and #2.
Ian Modder of North Vancouver, British Columbia gets a seven spot increase on the Leaderboard to #141 by placing 36th out of 1,903 in WSOP #83 NLHE The Closer.
Despite being called “The Closer”, Event #83 wasn’t even close to being the last bracelet tournament of the 2021 WSOP. This one was. It may be the latest (in the year) tournament to be played at a WSOP for quite some time, since they’re going back to the summer schedule. This game had a $5K buy-in, an aggressive two-day structure, and finished on November 23rd after 531 entries. 3 PNW players made a deep run in the event. with the first being from Edmonton, Ryan Snyder, who gained three hundred places on the Leaderboard, ending at #558. Lee Markholt didn’t gain any ground on the Leaderboard because he’s already way up at #8, but he did place at…8th. . And George Wolff came in 7th. Wolff went on to a mid-December 13th-place finish in the World Poker Tour Five Diamond NLHE Main Event. He stays at #17.
Dylan Linde moves up a spot—inside the Leaderboard top 10!—from #6 to #5 with an 8th-place finish in the WPT Five Diamond NLHE Main Event.
Jumping over to the Czech Republic, Mercer Island’s Carter Newhof rises more than four hundred places to #553 with a 3rd-place showing in World Series of Poker Europe #6 $200K GTD NLHE/PLO. Newhof was the only American in the top 10 of the 230 entries.
Jordan Westmorland gains nine places on the Leaderboard with a 5th of 57 finish at WSOP Europe #10 NLHE Platinum High Roller. Westmorland (from Lynnwood, Washington) is now #44.
Tracie Osborne from Lacey, Washington got their biggest cash in Lincoln, California, at the WPTDeepstacks Thunder Valley $1M GTD NLHE Championship by placing 20th of 588. Osborne moves from #2284 to #1722. Steve Chanthabouasy‘s 9th-place finish in the same event kicks them up a notch, to #88.
Twin Falls’ Sean Banahan racked up a best-ever cash at the Wynn Winter Classic $500K GTD NLHEthat wrapped up 12 December with 743 entries. Looking at the payouts, there may have been some sort of deal done at four players remaining. Banahan’s Hendon Mob record only goes back to January 2020, so it’s definitely been impacted by the pandemic, and it includes a cash in a Seniors event, but this was a nice way to end the year! Banahan goes from #1666 to #577.
The final entry in the Leaderboard this time is how I’d like to close out every Leaderboard: Angela Jordison, taking 5th in the 1,042-entry Mid-States Poker Tour Minnesota Winter Poker Classic #9 $300K GTD NLHE Main Event. It’s yet another personal best cash for Jordison, coming just a couple of months after the “money phone” record at the Venetian. This pops Jordison up anothher thirty places on the Leaderboard, to #181.
Kevmath Quarterly Yearly Top 20
This is the fourth edition of the Kevmath Quarterly, which got started before his recent acquisition by GPI/The Hendon Mob. These players are the top 20 recorded tournament earners for mid-December 2020 through mid-December 2021 (ranked in order of 2021 earnings), and the change in their rank on the PNW Poker Leaderboard (which is based on lifetime recorded earnings). Players whose names are followed by an asterisk were on the list last quarter.
Both Seth Davies and Christopher Brewer are far ahead of the pack, with more than $3 million each in recorded tournament cashes over the past year. Adam Hendrix and Dylan Linde are both in the high six figures, the other sixteen names are all in the range between $160K and $400K.
You can see the giant jumps in Leaderboard status resulting from deep runs in the World Series of Poker main Event by Jung Woo and Matthew Jewett; the shot-in-the-dark cash by Bin Weng in the WSOP NLHE High Roller, and Robert Davis‘s runner-up finish in the WSOP NLHE Seniors tournament. Christopher Brewer, Dylan Linde, and Dylan Wilkerson moving up the Leaderboard ranks pushed a couple of other high-performing players down a notch, despite being in the Top 20.
