The British Poker Awards: My Tip for International Player of the Year

The British Poker Awards: My Tip for International Player of the Year

The British Poker Awards is fast approaching and all this week Lee Davy will be giving us the lowdown on who he believes will walk away with the awards.

The British Poker Awards: My Tip for International Player of the YearAnother day, and another tip, and this time it’s my best guess on who I think is going to win the International Player of the Year award.

Nominations

  • David ‘Bakes’ Baker
  • Dan ‘DJK123’ Kelly
  • Viktor Blom
  • Daniel Negreanu
  • Marvin Rettenmaier

The first two players I am going to scratch off this shortlist are David ‘Bakes’ Baker and Dan ‘DJK123’ Kelly.

The Americans made the cut because of their excellent showings at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), but it’s this one-dimensional score card that also allows me to drop the guillotine.

Both players earned over $400,000 in WSOP cashes with Bakes cashing eight times and Kelly cashing nine times, and the pair made an impressive six final tables between them – and in a variety of different formats – but I need my International Player of the Year to make waves in more than one ocean.

The next player to be dropped like a frigid girlfriend is the online roller coaster Viktor Blom.

Personally, I think it’s a mistake to even have him on the shortlist so it’s an easy thumbs down for me. He didn’t produce a live performance of note, and despite being up more than $5m in his online cash game exploits, at one point in the year, he actually ended I with a fairly modest $580,000.

Where art thou Niklas Heinecker?

That leaves Marvin Rettenmaier and Daniel Negreanu battling it out for the award and in my book it’s an easy victory for the Canadian

Rettenmaier didn’t have a bad year; it’s just that Daniel Negreanu had a bloody great year.

It was always going to be tough for the German to follow up on the $2.5m that he earned in 2012, but he had a decent crack at it.

He made the final table of two World Poker Tour (WPT) main events, and finished 10th at the WPT Grand Prix de Paris; picked up a WPT High Roller win in Cyprus, a Russian Poker Tour (RPT) victory in Kiev, a €2k side event victory at the European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final in Monte Carlo and even had a great run in the WSOP Main Event where he finished in 99th place.

So a decent year…but Negreanu just had one better.

$3.2m in live tournament earnings, victory at the inaugural WSOP-APAC Main Event, victory at the WSOPE High Roller and his second WSOP Player of the Year award (the only player to ever achieve that feat) means the readers must have voted for the Canadian by the bucket load.

So my money is on Daniel Negreanu.