1. David Pham won his second Player of the Year honor and $1.8M in earnings this year.

2. J.C. Tran was second in POY standings and earned $2.9M this year.

3. Jonathan Little earned $2.5M in tournament winnings including a WPT win in May.

4. Tom Schneider earned $733,589 including 2 WSOP bracelets in 2007.

5. Scott “BigRisky” Clements won over $2.2M and finished fourth in the POY standings.

6. Scotty Nguyen won over $800,000 and had seven final tables this year.

7. William “Bill” Edler won over $2.7M including a WSOP bracelet and a WPT championship.

8. David Fox won almost $700,000 including a WPT Finals event in November.

9. David “Devilfish” Ulliott has won over $1.2M this year including two WPT wins.

10. Jerry Yang won the WSOP main event and over $8M, he makes the list because he becomes the second-largest tournament prize winner in history.

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.