2014 CarbonPoker Card Player Player of the Year Update -- Madsen and Elias Make Moves

After a late-summer frenzy things have settled down slightly within the 2014 Card Player Player of the Year race, sponsored by CarbonPoker. There have been still a variety of POY points and massive payouts to be awarded this week though. Here's a have a look at what went during the last seven days:

Heartland Poker Tour Commerce Main Event

A total of 583 $1,650 entries were made within the 2014 Heartland Poker Tour main event on the Commerce Casino. Because of this the full prize pool for the development climbed to $845,350. Just five months after winning the HPT California State Poker Championship main event on the exact same casino, Jeff Madsen returned to the general table searching for his second HPT title on the Commerce.

Madsen was unable to return out on top this time, finishing in eighth place for $21,300 and 140 Player of the Year points. This was his fifth final-table finish of the year, with the aforementioned win and another that came in a $1,000 prelim on the World Poker Tour Championship on the Borgata in April. Because of his continued success all year long Madsen now sits in 43rd place within the overall POY rankings, with 2,012 points and year-to-date earnings of $360,827.

While Madsen fell short, Jonathan Chen went directly to take the title, the $159,780 first-place prize and 840 POY points for the win.

World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open

The 2014 World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open $3,500 no-limit hold’em main event featured a $3 million guaranteed prize pool this year, but if a complete of 1,226 entries were made the overall prize pool ballooned to $3,924,426. The sizable prove mean that this year’s champion would win the fourth largest WPT event in history in relation to field size.

Just an afternoon shy of per week after the primary hand was dealt on this event a winner was indeed decided. That winner was none rather than Darren Elias, who had finished in fifth place on this exact same event in 2011. This time around he survived to heads-up play against Kane Kalas, who had knocked out all of the other four opponents on the six-handed final table and held a 2-to-1 chip advantage.

There was numerous play left, however, with Elias still sitting behind roughly 50 big blinds. Elias, who had greater than $3.7 in million in live and online tournament winnings previous to this event, was in a position to demonstrate why he's a highly respected pro at the tournament circuit when he began to use his experience to show across the chip counts. Thirty hands into heads-up play he had overtaken the lead, and soon after he emerged victorious. For the win Elias secured his first WPT title, the $843,744 first-place prize and 1,440 POY points. This was his third final table of the year, moving him into 79th place within the rankings with 1,584 points and $864,134 in year-to-date earnings.

Kalas took home $500,364 for his runner-up showing.

Here is a glance on the current top 20 within the POY standings:

Rank	Player	POY Points	Earnings
1	Daniel Colman	4,770	$20,980,768
2	Mustapha Kanit	4,514	$1,234,776
3	Mike Leah	4,174	$1,512,026
4	Jake Schindler	3,700	$2,156,184
5	Ami Barer	3,580	$1,930,121
6	Dylan Wilkerson	3,316	$1,076,307
7	Dominik Panka	3,315	$1,840,936
8	Mike McDonald	3,312	$4,357,089
9	Dan Smith	3,270	$2,671,809
10	Keven Stammen	3,262	$1,655,439
11	Jason Mercier	3,106	$2,778,584
12	Doug Polk	3,010	$3,503,603
13	Joseph Mckeehen	2,924	$1,193,232
14	Brandon Shack-Harris	2,890	$1,405,740
15	Kevin Eyster	2,874	$899,019
16	Joe Kuether	2,636	$762,856
17	Davidi Kitai	2,588	$1,377,077
18	Mukul Pahuja	2,514	$1,060,582
19	Isaac Baron	2,500	$1,508,968
20	Sorel Mizzi	2,495	$1,151,301

Read More... [Source: CardPlayer Poker News]