GPI announces Global Poker Masters, Hendon Mob to sue Poland Finance Ministry

global-poker-masters-initial-team-picks-are-outIn a press release,  The Global Poker Index (GPI), pokers 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) :

 

  • United States

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

  • U.K.

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

  • Canada

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

  • Germany

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

  • Russia

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

  • France

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

  • Italy

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

  • Ukraine

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-