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Money is how we keep score, right? For all of the talk of getting your money in +EV, bad beats, and "wouldas," "couldas" and "shouldas," the guy who leaves with the money is the winner.

Despite this incontrovertible fact, in a community in which money's value has been reduced to so many buy-ins, more incentive is needed than mere greenbacks for some to maximize performance and thrive. Bracelets and hall of fame inductions and everything in between. That's where Player of the Year honors come in.

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Courtesy of IMPDI 2009

Bluff's Player of the Year Jason Mercier had 19 cashes and $1,354,026 in tournament winnings in 2009.

If you win Player of the Year, it may not mean you were the best all-around poker player in the world (after all, cash games and most online play isn't accounted for), but you exhibited the best combination of success and consistency in live tournament play over 12 months. Considering the caliber of competition for such things, it's a lofty achievement, but one that comes with questions.

The 2009 Player of the Year was UB's Eric Baldwin, right? "Basebaldy" (his online alias) had a phenomenal year, highlighted by four tournament wins and 22 cashes for a total of $1,511,474 in tournament winnings. He scored 6,994 Player of the Year points in the Card Player Rankings, thoroughly outdistancing Cornel Cimpan's 5,934. Cimpan was followed in the standings by Yevgeniy Timoshenko (5,509), Vitaly Lunkin (4,473), Soheil Shamseddin (4,283), Daniel Alaei (4,142) and Player of the Year Jason Mercier (4,130).

Wait, what?

That's right, Mercier was the 2009 Player of the Year. Thanks to a campaign that featured five tournament victories, 19 cashes and $1,354,026 in tournament winnings, the PokerStars pro took Player of the Year honors with 1,427.98 points in the Bluff rankings, edging out Baldwin (1,208.48) and Cimpan (1,108.90).

The existence of two Player of the Year races seems to throw some confusion into the mix as to who was truly the title's most worthy recipient. Subtle differences between the systems create the divergent leaderboards, with players often forced to choose one system or the other to prioritize. Fortunately, this year's winners seem happy enough with one another's success.

"I think Eric is a great guy," said Mercier. "I think he's a really good player and I was really happy to see him win Card Player's Player of the Year. He's one of my good friends in poker. I'm happy he just got his sponsorship and love running into him on the circuit."

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Bluff magazine

Card Player Player of the Year Eric Baldwin had four tournament wins and 22 cashes for a total of $1,511,474 in tournament winnings.

"There are strengths and weaknesses to both systems," remarked Baldwin of the differing results. "I'm not taking anything away from Jason. He's incredible. There are a couple of glaring weaknesses to the Bluff system though."

That's how the debate begins. It is because of the differences that players must choose a system to compete in and that initial choice usually lends to defense in arguing merits in the wake of the results. Among the differences that make players choose:

Minimum entry requirement.

Card Player's system doesn't account for events with less than 60 competitors.

"A lot of prestigious tournaments these days have fewer than 60 players," lamented Michael Binger, a Bluff system supporter who finished second to John Phan in the Bluff POY race in 2008. "For some high roller events and the like to not be counted is silly."

Mercier agreed with Binger's sentiment. "Well, one of the things I think is kind of unfair about the Card Player system is any tournament that's less than 60 players doesn't count," said Mercier. "Those tournaments should have a minimum prize pool requirement, $150,000 or something like that. That way, a $5,000 tournament with 40-50 people would get CP points."

"You can get the same points for a five- or 55-man tournament in the Bluff rankings," Baldwin countered." That's the biggest flaw in the Bluff system. I know Jason is into pot-limit Omaha and some of the mixed games, while I haven't gotten into those yet. I didn't start because I was going after Card Player's Player of the Year and there were a lot of little tournaments at Bellagio when their numbers were down. I was playing in larger fields at the time. It was kind of sad. In October during Festa al Lago, I'd go to Bellagio and see if they'd get 60 players. If not, it wouldn't count for Card Player, so I'd end up not playing, go across the street and play a $300 or $1,000 tournament with 200 players."

Treatment of rebuy tournaments.

While Bluff records rebuy tournaments based on their buy-in, Card Player does what seems like the more diligent thing, and records the event's buy-in based on the average investment per player.

"Ten minutes before you called, I was talking about that," laughed Binger. "In 2008, I would have won if they'd done rebuys right, but they only counted buy-ins instead of average investment per person. It's an average of over three buy-ins each player spends, so it's a big difference. I'd love to talk to Bluff and give them my two cents on how they can fix that.

"I just won a $500 with rebuys pot-limit Omaha event in Biloxi [Miss.]. I was in for 18 buy-ins. On Bluff, I got 25 points because they assign ¼ points for less than $1000 buy-in and don't account for rebuys. Otherwise I'd have gotten 120 points. The fact there were 54 players meant I got zero points in Card Player."

Tournament value from 395 players to 999 players.

While Bluff's system piles on points for every 10 entries a tournament gains, Card Player's points multiplier is the same from 395 to 999 players, a fact even Baldwin admits could use some work. Binger was less diplomatic, saying, "The lack of jumps [here] is just laziness really."

Emphasis on victory.

Both systems highlight and emphasize victory in different ways. Bluff's system awards 100 points even for the smaller wins, while Card Player puts a massive emphasis on victory in large events.

"One of the problems with the Bluff system is the 100-point minimum for winning a tournament," said Mercier. "In the Bahamas, there was a $100,000 tournament with nine players and the winner got 100 points. That's pretty crazy. No matter how big it is, as long as you win $100,000 or more, you'll get 100 points. Most of the time you only need like 1,200 points to win and I won five tournaments in 2009, so that alone got me halfway there. Of course, I had other cashes or whatever. In Card Player, you have to have 60 people in the field. Winning small tournaments is much more valuable on Bluff."

"I think Bluff is generally a much better measure of the best player," Binger said. "Eric Baldwin is a fantastic player and kind of bucked the trend, but in general it's so top-heavy towards big buy-ins and big fields. Snap off a couple of huge tournaments and you can have it locked up. Eric was an exception and did it the old-fashioned way."

The inclusion of online tournaments.

There's little doubt among educated thinkers that the live and online games are separate entities and Bluff and Card Player have taken different approaches to whether online should be recognized in any way for POY purposes. While Bluff doesn't include any online results (and in fact, has a separate online POY award), Card Player set the seemingly arbitrary prize pool threshold of $5 million as a qualifier for online events counting, essentially saying success in the biggest online tournaments shouldn't be completely ignored. Of course, that threshold is so high that only two events qualified this year.

"When Timoshenko won the World Championship of Online Poker, that caused some controversy," Baldwin recalled. "I don't even know how I feel about online events qualifying. Online poker has gotten so big that part of me feels like it should count for something. I don't know. I think they should probably keep them separate. Those two tournaments are so big that they award an incredible amount of points."

"Online shouldn't count if they're only going to have two per year that count," insists Mercier. "They could take every FTOPS main event, SCOOP, WCOOP and stuff like that. Make it 20-50 tournaments that count. Either that or zero should count."

"I think keeping live and online separate is fine," said Binger. "Bluff has their online contest and that means it shouldn't filter live. CP puts in those two and really, why those two? It's so arbitrary!"

Regardless of the issues that presently exist with the two systems in place, there's little doubt that for these three players, and countless others, what's already out there is important enough to make a difference. "I think my competitive background made a contest like this appeal to me. I played college baseball because I enjoyed it and wanted to get better," said Baldwin. "Wanting to win really appealed to me. It was a challenge. I like the structure. The rules are laid out and it's a great contest. It was so much fun to go after it, I'd definitely do it again."

Mercier echoed the sentiment: "I'd say more players from a sports background can get motivated by a POY race because of stats, knowing this tournament will get you so far … it's something to shoot for. It's like scoring more points or winning more games. Being Player of the Year became a goal. When I got the lead, I wanted to hold onto it. Now, for 2010 I'm going after it. I want back to back, or to win the Card Player title. Now it's a goal. It wasn't until I won."

Maybe there's room for two Players of the Year. Baldwin and Mercier are both obviously deserving for their 2009 accomplishments. Both were focused on the task at hand and each stands ready to try to repeat. While the confusion over two imperfect systems persists (and seems unlikely to end anytime soon, considering their competing interests), each system is a celebration of two great performances this year by Baldwin and Mercier.

Gary Wise is a poker columnist for ESPN.com.

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