The World Series of Poker has opened the public nomination process for the Poker Hall of Fame class of 2016. Fans can visit wsop.com to submit a nominee along with a brief explanation of why that player is deserving. After the nomination window closes, the nominees will be vetted and the top ten will be named finalists. From there, the 25 living Hall of Fame members and a panel of poker media members (there were 16 last year) will submit their ballots to determine who the newest members of the Poker Hall of Fame will be.
Last year, Jennifer Harman and John Juanda, two of the most visible poker pros from the poker boom of last decade, were voted into the Hall. The other eight nominees were: Chris Bjorin, David Chiu, Bruno Fitoussi, Carlos Mortensen, Max Pescatori, Terry Rogers, Matt Savage, and David “Devilfish” Ulliott.
The Poker Hall of Fame has established a set of criteria that nominees must satisfy to be eligible for the Hall of Fame:
• A player must have played poker agains acknowledged top competition
• Played for high stakes
• Be a minimum of 40 years old at time of nomination
• Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers
• Stood the test of time
• Or, for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.
Most of those are fairly subjective, but the one objective requirement – age – is key this year, as Phil Ivey is now 40-years old and is eligible for the Hall. If he isn’t elected, it would be almost as shocking as if Donald Trump is actually elected president. In live tournaments alone, Ivey has won nearly $24 million and has ten World Series of Poker bracelets. And who could even guess how much he has won in cash games.
Last year’s election was surrounded by controversy as even though the finalists were well represented by Europeans, none were elected to the Hall. The fifty-member Hall of Fame is almost exclusively composed of North Americans.
In a blog post, Joe Beevers criticized the process and results, writing, “There are zero living non-American’s in the Poker Hall of Fame and the only non-American name I can see in the list of (now) 50 is Edmond Hoyle, inducted in 1980 (he died in 1769). Sounds like they have a fair system here with no bias whatsoever, right?”
European Poker Tour founder John Duthie also gave his opinion, saying, “No non-U. S. poker player should even consider accepting a nomination to the WSOP Hall of Fame. I have the greatest respect for both (Juanda and Harman) and their selection is understandable, but the WSOP need to take a serious look at the whole process.”
As my colleague Earl Burton pointed out last year, “….note [Duthie’s] bastardization of the POKER Hall of Fame name, which has been in existence since 1979.”
My biggest criticism of the voting process is that it offers absolutely no transparency. We never see the results of the public nomination process, so we don’t know if the ten finalists were actually the top ten vote getters. There have been times when a name who the general public would have never known, especially not to the point where he would have been amongst the top ten most named nominees. We don’t usually know which members of the media cast the final ballots unless they write an article explaining their choices. Making the process more transparent should not be difficult and would make people feel must more comfortable with the entire process.