Professional poker player Phil “Poison” Ivey winning two championship gold bracelets at the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) and then making the ‘09 WSOP Main Event final table is the top poker story of 2009, a leading poker magazine has declared.

Well-respected poker mag Card Player (www.cardplayer.com) has listed what it sees as the Top 10 poker news stories of the year, and Ivey is No. 1.

So who were the runnersup?

Here are those Top 10 stories, in reverse order, as determined by Card Player:

No. 10–Party Gaming Ltd., the British parent company of online poker room Party Poker (www.partypoker.com), purchases offline pro poker tour the World Poker Tour (WPT).

No. 9–Canadian poker pro Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu reclaims the career offline poker tournament earnings lead with $12.3 million earned, after finishing second in the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) Main Event. He had led until 2006, when Jamie Gold won the WSOP Main Event and $12.2 million and overtook him.

No. 8–Five people won more than one championship gold bracelet at the 2009 WSOP, the most multiple winners since there were six in 2003.

No. 7–Cocky American Joe Cada, 21, wins the 2009 WSOP Main Event to become the youngest WSOP Main Event winner in history.

No. 6–A father-son combo for the first time in history makes the WSOP and WSOPE Main Event final tables in the same year. The dad, Barry Shulman, publisher of Card Player, made the 2009 WSOPE Main Event final table and his son, Jeff Shulman, editor of Card Player, made the 2009 WSOP Main Event final table. The dad won his event while the son finished in fifth place in his.

No. 5–Italian poker pro Jeffrey “The Iceman” Lisandro wins three championship gold bracelets at the 2009 WSOP. He’s the fifth man in history to accomplish that feat.

No. 4–The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), passed by the U.S. Congress in 2006 and scheduled to go into effect in 2009, was delayed until at least 2010. The Act, which severely restricts online poker and other forms of online gambling in the USA by banning credit card payments to Internet gambling sties, is being re-examined by a new Congress that’s more sympathetic to online wagering.

No. 3–Sleazy poker pro Russ Hamilton of Las Vegas was officially identified by a regulatory agency as the guiding force behind the massive cheating scandals that rocked online poker rooms Absolute Poker (www.absolutepoker.com) and Ultimate Bet (www.ultimatbet.com) earlier this decade. Millions of dollars were stolen from unsuspecting online poker players, and Hamilton still hasn’t been arrested or charged.

No. 2–An unidentified Swedish Internet poker player who uses the handle “Isildur1″ made a splash online. The 12 biggest pots in online poker history, all multi-million-dollar affairs, were all played in 2009 on Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.com) and the high-rolling Swede was involved in all 12.

No. 1–Ivey wins two bracelets at the ‘09 WSOP and then makes the WSOP Main Event final table and finishes in seventh place.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)