This year marked the first time the public was able to vote for whom they felt deserved to be in the Poker Hall of Fame. All-in-all, when the nine finalists were announced it appeared the public got it right; the nine nominees were: Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Dan Harrington, Erik Seidel, Men Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Mike Sexton, Phil Ivey, and Tom McEvoy.

If previous inductees are any indication of how the committee tends to vote the smart money is on one of the older players like Barry Greenstein, Dan Harrington, Tom McEvoy, Men Nguyen, and Mike Sexton. Players like Scotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, and Phil Ivey are all still in their poker prime, and will eventually be inducted in time.Tom “durrrr” Dwan was originally a finalist as well, but was removed for not meeting the criteria (Dwan is in his early 20’s and has accomplished very little outside of Internet poker).

The criteria used by the Poker Hall of Fame for inclusion is:

• A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition
• Played for high stakes
• Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers
• Stood the test of time
• contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.

The inductee(s) will be announced when the World Series of Poker reconvenes in November, for the final table, during a special ceremony.

Tags: Poker Hall of Fame, WSOP News

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Poker Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.