The top candidates for player of the year would have to be J.C. Tran, William “Bill” Edler, Jonathan Little and David Pham. They are at the top of just about every professional ranking list out there right now, all within a few hundred points of each other. Pham leads the CardPlayer Magazine standing with 5,410 points with 10 final tables. He is third on the PokerPage’s ProRank 1 list with 25,378 points.
J.C. Tran tops the ProRank 1 list (27,044 points) but is in fifth place (4,458 points) on CardPlayer’s. Bill Edler is second on PR 1 (25,446 point) and fourth on CP (4,777 points). Jonathan Little is fourth on PR 1 (24,477 points) and second on CP (5,272 points).
That makes the race for the best player up in the air at this point. There’s not many events left in the year, but my money is on J.C. Tran to win.
The explosion in the popularity of poker the last few years has seen everything that can somehow be attached to the game marketed and sold. This includes books, games, calendars, cards and even poker camps.
It may seem like a novelty idea, but poker camps have become very popular and are big business recently. A number of professional poker players either run their own camp or are affiliated with one in some way. Howard Lederer helps run Poker Reality Camp, Camp Hellmuth is run by Phil Hellmuth and even Doyle Brunson got in on the act with his son Todd Brunson in the Super System Poker Camp. One of the most popular and well-known camps is the WPT Boot Camp run by the same people that produce the World Poker Tour.
With a wide range of admission fees (from as low as $1,500 to as high as $3,500 and up), is it worth shelling out the cash? It’s worth noting that anyone who thinks they can’t learn a few things from a poker pro is a fool, and deserves to keep making mistakes at the table. Internet message boards indicate that most poker players (novice or experts) find the camps well worth the time and money because of the close interaction with the pros and the close attention paid to skills that are actually helpful at the table. If you do have a couple extra grand, attending a poker camp may be a good investment to improve your game and win more cash.
Two poker players that have gone bad are Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott. Both have done time; Matusow for drugs and refusal to wear a wire, and Ulliott for robbery and assault. Matusow was in prison from September 2004 to April 2005. While he was in there he lost $250,000 that he had won in a WPT event on sports betting, and had to be staked once he got out of the clink.
Dave Ulliott was a real bad boy. He was a member of a safe-cracking team and spent time behind bars in England on numerous occasions. After a friend’s wife convinced him to go straight, he has become one of the best poker players in the world.
Both have changed their evil ways now and have learned from their wild ways. Both have won millions playing poker and don’t need to break any laws anymore.
Harvard Lawyer Charles Nelson is trying to get society to loosen up its legislation and opinion of the game of poker. Nelson argues that the game is a good learning tool for people to practice the skills of seeing things through other people’s point of view.
He has spoken out to loosen local Massachusetts regulations and has organized the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. The society is growing and has other university chapters already. Nelson wants to show that poker is a game of skill and not just chance. He’s also lobbying against the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, trying to separate poker from the other games of chance.
The response has been the same as always. Opposition to Nelson’s argument has heard this before. The Rev. Richard McGowan, a Boston College professor and gambling expert, said “The industry is always trying to argue that these are games, not gambling.”
