Beginning next Tuesday, the brainchild of one of the most powerful men in the poker industry will actually come to fruition. On Tuesday evening, the Global Poker League will begin its inaugural season with its first live matches streamed to fans and later broadcast across the Poker Central channel.
The creator of the GPL, Alexandre Dreyfus, remarked on the creation of his pet project in an e-mail announcement to the media recently. “Three years ago it was an idea,” Dreyfus began in his e-mail statement. “Two years ago it was a Word document; one year ago it was a PowerPoint (presentation) (and) next week, it’s going live.” From those germinations of thought, the Global Poker Index has been born, but it has been a long course in reaching this point.
It took Dreyfus’ ability to combine several entities along the way to have the tools to put together a professional poker league, one tasked with the challenging goal of “sportifying” the game of poker. It all started in 2012 when Dreyfus picked up the Global Poker Index, one of the assets of Federated Sports & Gaming (the ill-fated endeavor that brought about the Epic Poker League) that was actually worth something, and turned it into arguably the preeminent ratings system in the poker world. Since that time, Dreyfus added on such entities as TheHendonMob.com (to cover the history of tournament poker and, once again, arguably THE go-to place for live tournament results) and other sites to drive the launch of the GPL and its inaugural 12 teams.
Now, come Tuesday night, it all begins for the GPL.
The GPL season will start off on April 5 with the two conferences squaring on in intra-conference battles. The six teams that make up GPL Eurasia – the Hong Kong Stars, the Moscow Wolverines, the Berlin Bears, the Paris Aviators, the Rome Emperors and the London Royals – will square off in two Six-Max battles scheduled for noon and 1:40PM (all times are Eastern Time U. S.). Following the completion of those two sessions, the GPL Americas teams – the L. A. Sunset, the Sao Paulo Metropolitans, the Toronto Nationals, the San Francisco Rush, the New York Rounders and the Las Vegas Moneymakers – will take to the felt with their own two sessions scheduled for 3:30 and 5:10PM.
These sessions will be played live on the GPL’s game platform and will be streamed live over the GPL’s outlet GPL.tv. If you do miss the live stream, there will be recaps done on Twitch and on Poker Central, which will dedicate programming time to the GPL three nights a week (Tuesdays through Thursdays) to offer up information on the current state of the GPL.
On Wednesday (April 6), the teams will actually begin playing each other. Starting at noon (Eastern Time), the GPL Eurasia will run with the following schedule:
Hong Kong Stars vs. Moscow Wolverines, 12PM
Berlin Bears vs. Paris Aviators, 2:30PM
Rome Emperors vs. London Royals, 5PM
And on Thursday (April 7), the GPL Americas gets into the act:
L. A. Sunset vs. Sao Paulo Metropolitans, 1PM
Toronto Nationals vs. San Francisco Rush, 3:30PM
New York Rounders vs. Las Vegas Moneymakers, 6PM
The GPL will consist of a 19-week regular season – split between a 14 week “spring” session and a five-week “summer” session following the World Series of Poker – at which point the playoffs will begin.
Dreyfus isn’t pulling any punches for the GPL Finals, either. The league has booked The SSE Arena at Wembley in London, the United Kingdom, to be the host for the inaugural championship battle. “London gives us the opportunity to build a fully immersive, interactive experience for the GPL Finals thanks to its regulated online sports betting environment,” Dreyfus said in explaining why London was chosen. “We are going to connect fans with one another as well as the GPL players at a leading entertainment venue. The experience is more than just ‘sit and watch’ – its full engagement.”
Poker fans may or may not be jumping on board with the GPL, but more importantly what will be the “make or break” of the entire GPL experiment is whether the general audience gets into the game. If the Everyday Fan views the GPL as a sporting contest – like a football match, a basketball game, something that can be viewed from a sporting angle – and will treat the event as such, then Dreyfus will have reached his goal of taking poker to the next level, of “sportifying” the game. The first step is the inaugural week of play…and that starts on Tuesday.
