In a press release, The Global Poker Index (GPI), poker’s ranking authority, has officially announced dates and full event details for the first-ever Global Poker Masters (Masters) – Poker’s World Cup – taking place March 21st – 22nd at the Hilton Portomaso in Malta. A yearly event, the Masters brings together 8 National teams from the best overall Poker countries to compete for the title of Poker’s World Champion Nation.
The 8 teams – together with their All-Star players – represent the cream of the crop in terms of Poker talent from all over the world. The qualification process for the Masters is performance based both in determining which 8 nations are eligible, as well as determining which players are invited to represent their countries in competition. The 8 most highly represented Nations in GPIs global rankings (consisting of over 400,000 ranked players across 95 countries, via 225,000+ qualifying events throughout 1,450+ casinos) qualify, with the best players from each nation according to national-level GPI rankings comprising each team.
A Legitimate World Cup
As Global Poker Masters director Alex Dreyfus notes, “This is Poker’s first legitimate World Cup, made possible by an unbiased team and nation selection process carried out by GPI. We’re grateful and excited to have the endorsement and support from both casual and professional players all over the world on this. The goal is clear: We want to #SportifyPoker and bring this mind sport to mainstream recognition for the game’s 100+ million global fans.”
The Masters’ eight 4 player national team line-ups have been finalized. They are an accomplished group, and with a combined 1,789 cashes, 186 wins and 919 final tables between them there will be no shortage of world class competition on display. All confirmed players – whose total lifetime winnings total more than $135 million – will be at the tables together and each team will also be adding a 5th wildcard player to their ranks before competition begins to round out the event’s list of 40 competitors.
Part of the success of Global Poker Masters’ model rests in its GPI pedigree. “The legitimacy of GPI as a player ranking authority has given us a strong foundation to build sports-formatted events like The Masters which emphasize the enormous skill element of this game.” explains Dreyfus, adding “another important step is our commitment to eliminating the financial risk from the perspective of the players involved – taking the financial gamble out of the equation as Poker continues to evolve into a genuine sport. There should be no barriers – Poker is a competition, plain and simple.”
The full line-up of nations and players for the 2015 Global Poker Masters (Rankings as of December 31st, 2014) :
Dan Smith GPI #2 (National #1) Jake Schindler GPI #7 (National #4) Bryn Kenney GPI #8 (National #5) Olivier Busquet GPI #34 (National #7) Wildcard: TBD |
Jack Salter GPI #19 (National #2) Simon Deadman GPI #35 (National #3) Oliver Price GPI #39 (National #4) Sam Trickett GPI #99 (National #5) Wildcard: TBD |
Amichai Barer GPI #3 (National #1) Sorel Mizzi GPI #9 (National #2) Andrew Chen GPI #16 (National #4) Jonathan Duhamel GPI #27 (National #5) Wildcard: TBD |
Ole Schemion GPI #1 (National #1) Marvin Rettenmaier GPI #22 (National #2) George Danzer GPI #40 (National #3) Martin Finger GPI #50 (National #4) Wildcard: TBD |
Anatoly Filatov GPI #28 (National #1) Vladimir Troyanovskiy GPI #49 (National #2) Ivan Soshinikov GPI #57 (National #3) Vitaly Lunkin GPI #77 (National #4) Wildcard: TBD |
Erwann Pecheux GPI #58 (National #1) Benjamin Pollack GPI #72 (National #2) Fabrice Soulier GPI #147 (National #3) Sylvain Loosli GPI #169 (National #4) Wildcard: TBD |
Dario Sammartino GPI #13 (National #1) Mustapha Kanit GPI #37 (National #2) Andrea Dato GPI #54 (National #3) Giuliano Bendinelli GPI #144 (National #4) Wildcard: TBD |
Eugene Katchalov GPI #48 (National #1) Oleksandr Gnatenko GPI #186 (National #2) Oleksii Khoroshenin GPI #253 (National #3) Igor Yaroshevsky GPI #270 (National #4) Wildcard: TBD |
Hendon Mob to Sue Poland’s Finance Ministry?
According to tweets of Alex Dreyfus, the Chief Executive Officer of Global Poker Index(GPI), the vast poker database of Hendon Mob is being crawled by bots from Poland’s Finance Ministry regularly. Tweeting, Dreyfus also said that Hendon Mob will sue the Polish Ministry if this continues since the database isn’t there for stealing but for informational usage.
Below is what he has tweeted-
Dear @MF_GOV_PL (Finance Minister of Poland), please stop crawling/stealing data from @thehendonmob. Its ILLEGAL. 1/2
— Alexandre Dreyfus (@alex_dreyfus) January 19, 2015