We're in the home stretch for the end of year awards...ONE GAME TO GO!
Player of the Year
Terry and Abi were able to close the gap a bit with Clark in tournament 15 but it is going to take three solid tournament finishes down the stretch for Terry or any of the other contenders and early exits for Clark to take this trophy. Darin, Terry, Christine and Abi have mathematical outside shots at winning the PoY but this one is Clark's to lose.
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After game 16 (with 2 games to go), Clark has a virtual lock on the 2007 PoY title. Terry and Abi have a small mathematical chance of the upset but this race is all but over at this point.
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Game 17 didn't see a lot of movement as Abi, Christine, and Darin weren't able to make the tournament. Terry busted out fairly early so her game didn't count in the standings. Clark gained 2 more points and has locked everyone out of the top spot unless the last game has 24 players, Clark comes in last, and Abi, Christine, Darin, or Terry comes in first.
I'm going to call this race over...
Bounty Hunter of the Year
This is the most volatile of the awards and Terry continues to hold the lead. With three more bounties in tournament 15 she has stretched her lead with the only other major contender scoring any bounties being Abi. Terry currently holds a 205 point lead over Abi in this race but mathematically, Clark, Darin, Abi, John, Mike, adn Sue are easily in striking distance to take this one away. This could be a crazy shoot-out inthe last three tournaments to see who will take the trophy in July!
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After game 16, the Bounty Hunter race has shifted significantly. Mike captured 6 bounties for 450 points to jump from 4th to 1st with the slimmest of margins (160 points). It goes to show that this is a trophy that won't be decided until the final hand of the final tournament of the season. Anyone in the top 10 has a shot at taking this with a good game or two. It's Mike in the hot seat now. Can he hold this tiger by the tail through the final two games?
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Game 17 had three of the contenders playing with 45 points per bounty on the line. Clark is the only one to score any bounties. However, the worst game this game replaced in his top ten also had 2 bounties on it. So Clark only netted 20 points keeping him a slightly better margin in 3rd place. The contenders for this race have been trimmed to 4, though with a large enough game and a huge 6+ bounty night, someone could take this away from further down the leader board in the last game.
All four of the contenders will be able to count every bounty in the final game (if they are able to score more points then their worst top ten game) and each bounty is worth 5x the number of players in the tournament.
- Mike only has 5 games counting so any bounty he takes will count no matter what. He just needs to score enough to keep the lead or prevent the other contenders from placing high enough to beat him.
- Terry has the best shot at overtaking Mike, but she has to score enough points to beat her worst top ten game as well. She needs four people to go out in front of her and score 160 bounty points which in a 9 player game would be four people. The larger the game, the better the chance Terry has of making this happen.
- Clark needs at least 6 people to go out in front of him and score enough bounties to overtake Mike and Terry. It's only 240 points but to get that many, the game will need to be pretty big or he'll have to take down 6 people himself (in a 9 player game, 6 people would be worth 270 points).
- Abi is a little better off in the fact that she only has to have 5 people go out in front of her, but she needs an additional 50 points to take the lead. This means 7 bounties in one night (in a 9 player tournament). Abi needs a lot of players, and a lot of good cards to get the number of bounties she needs down to a resonable level.
The top 4 going into the final game:
- Mike (-) - 1290
- Terry (-) - 1130
- Clark (-) - 1050
- Abi (-) - 1000
Most Improved Player of the Year
This race got even more interesting after game #15. With Terry taking down first place, Sue coming in second, James and Casey not in the game and Darin busting out early. Things have really tightened up and now it is really a race to the finish. This has become a 5 player battle and all five players are deserving of the Most Improved mantle as all five players have made significant improvements to their games and overall showing at Ragged Aces tournaments. Getting into the top three for the vote is the real goal, after that, it's all about the impression the players have made during the year.
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Game 16 saw the top four MIP contenders lose rating points and the gap close a small amount between Darin and Terry. The real question for this race is "who will be the third player on the ballot?". James, Casey, and Sue have had solid years with huge improvements over last year but one of them needs to break away in the last two games to make a big impression and give them a shot at this trophy.
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Casey, James, and Sue saw their ratings drop after Game 17. Since Casey and James didn't play in the game it was interesting to see their ratings drop, but it is because a big part of this rating is year/year leader board placement and both of them were passed by other players in Game 17. The most interesting thing to happen, was that Clark actually moved into the top 5. I don't think it is possible for him to get to the top 3, but it shows that he has really improved his overall game this year over last.
Mathematically, the top 5 most improved players are:
- Darin (4.18 rating)
- Terry (3.34 rating)
- Casey (2.28 rating)
- James (1.89 rating)
- Clark (1.69 rating)
Good luck to everyone in the final game, I look forward to awarding the trophies to the winners at the championship!