Card Player has made a careful analysis of the top ten players on its 2012 Player of the Year (POY) leader board, especially taking into consideration the poker careers of players on the second, third, and fourth place.
The player who occupies the fourth position is Kyle Julius. He has earned a total of 3,752 POY points, won $2,103,282, and reached 3 final tables this year. Although Kyle did not win a single title this tournament year, he was very successful.
To begin with, he emerged as the runner-up of the main event of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) and won a total of $1.5 million and 2000 POY points. He reached the final table of the $1k Binion’s Poker Classic event and attracted a lot of attention when he emerged as the runner-up of a $5k NL Hold’em WSOP event, winning $589,687 and 1,600 POY points.
The player who occupies the third position on the POY leader board is Marvin Rettenmaier. Unlike Kyle Julius, Marvin has four titles to his credit. Besides, he has reached 8 final tables, won $2,423,741, and earned 4,130 POY points. A 25-year-old professional poker player from Germany, Rettenmaier has proved to be a formidable opponent at live poker tournaments. He has reached more final tables than any other online poker player in 2011 and has bagged titles such as the World Poker Tour (WPT) $25k championship, two European Poker Tour (EPT) side event titles, and the WPT Merit Cyprus Classic title.
The German poker player said:
There is definitely a good percentage of me that is not playing just for the money, but is also playing for prestige as well. I don’t have to play the high rollers against the very good players, but the rankings do mean something to me. You can’t really prove who is the best within a single tournament, or even within a single year, either.
Dan Smith is at the second position on the POY leader board, having earned 5,040 POY points, grabbed six titles, reached 9 final tables, and won $3,673,806. The 23-year-old professional poker player had a excellent tournament year and only needs 60 more POY points to become the number one player on the POY leader board. Smith has won more titles than any other player this year, proving to be one of the toughest NL Hold’em players and winning events with buy-ins as large as €5k to $100k.
