Player Focus: charder

Christian Harder has been on a serious heater over the last 12 months.

The man known as ‘charder’ was studying business last semester at Salisbury University (in his local state of Maryland) but took a year off to concentrate on his poker – the extra focus has helped propelled him to the heady heights of the Pocket Fives leader-board and TV exposure in several live final tables as well.

In September last year Harder secured his first major score by taking down the Full Tilt $1k Monday for a cool $80,750; and he put this new-found bankroll to good use. His sick run really started in February, when he final tabled the Ultimate Bet $200,000 GTD (3rd, $18,000) before also final tabling the PokerStars $200 Re-Buys (3rd, $24,658) two weeks later. Then the big wins started to come, with victories in the Ultimate Bet $75,000 GTD ($20,250), the Stars Nightly Hundred Grand ($20,896) & $100 Re-Buys ($33,990) sewing up a position in the P5’s top 20 until he had a September to top it all. A second in the Ultimate Bet $200,000 GTD ($27,000) was followed up by a stunning WCOOP just ten days later. It was in the early hours of the 17th September that Harder achieved the incredible feat of winning the WCOOP PLO 2nd Chance for $23,220 and finishing runner-up in the $200 NLH 2nd Chance (for $13,636) in the same night! It is probably no surprise, then, that Harder went very deep in the Main Event just 4 days later, eventually finishing in an agonising 11th place for $87,400. Since this epic run he has still found time to take down the FT $65,000 GTD in October for $22,969 to take his prizes on Stars & FT to over $1.1million: most of which was achieved in little over a year.

But back in January Harder gave us a warning of his ability by final tabling two major offline tournaments on different sides of the world in the space of just 20 days. In the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, his first ever major live tournament, Harder came in 7th for a cool $200,000 on a final table that included the likes of David ‘The Dragon’ Pham & eventual winner Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier. He then turned his attention to the EPT Dortmund when Poker Verdict was there to see Harder final table again, this time busting in 8th for $125,481. Check out his elimination hand below, where he was unlucky to run his AK into Mike ‘Timex’ McDonald’s Aces:



It’s hard to imagine Harder could have envisaged his first ‘professional’ year going any better: he is currently #15 in the P5’s rankings and if he continues to focus on his game over his studies at Salisbury then he could easily move even higher in 2009.