Compton Nabs Top 500 Title

It’s official: Chris Compton is the winner of the 2013 Barry Crane Top 500. When final totals were posted with the running of the monthly masterpoint cycle on Feb. 5, Compton’s total for 2013 came to 2767.60. Runner-up Mark Itabashi finished the year with 2757.39 masterpoints.

Following the 2013 Fall NABC in Phoenix, the two professional players went practically non-stop in pursuit of masterpoints, mostly at regional tournaments but also at clubs. As the year drew to a close, Dallas-based Compton was playing in Myrtle Beach SC, where he was a member of the winning team in a knockout, earning 38.46 masterpoints, which turned out to be necessary for the victory. Had his team lost in the KO final, Compton would have earned only 26.92 MPs, a difference of 11.54 points. That would have given the title to Itabashi by 1.33 masterpoints.

Itabashi, who lives in Murrieta CA, finished the year at tournaments in Reno NV and Monterey CA. He recorded a win in an A/X Swiss Teams (Reno) and a midnight knockout in Monterey, neither of which paid enough MPs to move him into first. He was listed on a team in a bracketed KO that started on New Year’s Eve, meaning any masterpoints he earned would have counted for 2013. The team played without him in the first round but did not qualify to play further so he earned no masterpoints from that event.

Compton won the Top 500 race in 2011.