The season is over and only the Championship is to be decided on July 7th. It was an exciting year of growth for the Ragged Aces where we had 51 people play in at least one game, 31 of which had never played with the Ragged Aces before. Invitations to the championship game will be sent to the top 24 players and alternates will be asked to participate in place of top 24 players that are unable to attend. Four trophies are to be awarded/won at the championship game of which two, the winner has already been determined. The final results of the trophy race:
Player of the Year
Early on, this trophy was contested by the top five finishers (Clark, Christine, Abi, Terry, and Darin) with each of them holding the number one spot (or close to it) at some point during the season. As the year progressed, Clark started distancing himself from the pack with consistent top 5 finishes until the final five games held slim mathematical chances of him being toppled from the top of the pack. By the final game, it was mathematically impossible for him to be pushed off the number one spot and he locked up the Player of the Year trophy.
This is Clark's second first place finish in a season and his first Player of the Year Award (the first year a player vote was held at the championship and it was awarded to Abi).
Bounty Hunter of the Year
The battle of the bounty was still active to the final three players of the final table of the final game of the season! All season it had been hard to hold the lead on this trophy race. It was held early on by Garth, then John held it for a while before it was pulled out from under him by Terry and finally Mike over the last three games. In the final tournament it came down to a race between the top three bounty hunters, Mike, Terry, and Clark. Mike was knocked out early with no bounties opening the door for Clark and Terry. Terry was knocked out shortly after Mike with no bounties. This left an open field for Clark to try to take down two more players to snatch it away (Clark took out Mike which was one of the three he needed).
Clark still only had one bounty when the table was down to four players, but he felted Christine in fourth place to get his second bounty of the night and a nice stack of chips with a decent shot at eliminating one of the last two players to take the trophy. Rich "the Revealer" pummeled the field all night taking down a total of 8 bounties in one game (a new Ragged Aces record!) but he was so far behind it wasn't enough for him to get into the bounty hunter race. It did however, stop Clark from getting his third bounty as he drew out four Kings to send Clark to the rail in 3rd place.
A 50 point difference (less than one bounty) between first and second is all it took as Mike held on to the bounty hunter lead and will receive the 2007 Bounty Hunter of the Year Mug at the Championship Game.
Most Improved Player of the Year
A lot of players have shown a huge amount of improvement this year so we had to come up with a mathematical way of comparing apples to apples to get a final three for voting at the championship. This will enable the players to vote in the winner of the Most Improved Player based on how they feel a player has done all year but only enable the players that have truly shown the most improvement (through statistics) that they deserve the vote.
This race has been tight all season long with much improved play from Casey, Christine, Clark, Darin, James, Rob, Sue, and Terry. All of these players impoved their stats to varying degrees year over year from 2006 to 2007. The goal of this race has been to get into and stay in the top three. After the final game of the season, the three players that improved most statistically year over year are:
Clark, Darin, and Terry
I will put together a ballot for the championship in which all championship attendees will be able to vote on the most improved player amongst the top three. Good luck to all!