Byron Kaverman Leads GPI for Two Months Straight
As the year starts to wind down, Byron Kaverman continues to lead the Global Poker Index in its two key rankings, according to the latest update provided by the GPI on Wednesday. For the eighth consecutive week, Kaverman is tops in the overall GPI standings and for the third straight week, he leads the 2015 Player of the Year ranks.
I have explained how the Global Poker Index works before, but to save you some searching, I will do it again. Ready? Go. The GPI is a rankings system that aims to determine who the best live tournament player in the world is at the moment. It tallies results over a trailing three-year period, taking into account the size of a tournament’s field, the buy-in, and the player’s finish in order to determine a GPI score for any given event. Tournament fields must be at least 21 players and have a buy-in of at least one dollar to count. Additionally, tournaments with buy-ins over $20,000 or fields greater than 2,700 (except if the buy-in is less than $2,000), have their calculations capped so as not to skew the numbers.
As mentioned, a player’s past three years’ worth of results are used in the GPI. These three years are divided into six half-year periods, weighted from most-current to least. So as not to give someone an advantage for simply playing in more tournaments than anyone else, only a player’s five best GPI scores are used in each of the most recent three half-year periods, while four are used in the other three half-year periods, for a maximum of 27 total tournaments. Thus, if a player has, say, scores of 100, 100, 200, 200, and 300 for the most recent six months and then nabs another 300 point score, one of the 100 point events will drop off.
The points are totaled and the players are ranked in the Global Poker Index. Yay!
The calculations for the Player of the Year race work similarly, but (and this may be obvious), only results from the current calendar year count and there is no aging factor. That is, tournaments don’t count any less at the beginning of the year than they do at the end of the year. A player’s top 13 GPI scores are figured into his total.
Byron Kaverman
Image credit: globalpokerindex.com
With 4,415.13 points, Kaverman picked up about eight points from last week. Jason Mercier, in second place with 4,263.66, added a few points, and Anthony Zinno lost a few to drop to 4,006.85. Kaverman notched a 39th-place finish at the WPT bestbet Bounty Scramble last week, but that score does not figure into his overall GPI total.
Amongst the other notable names at the top of the standings is Steve O’Dwyer, who returned to the GPI top ten this week, stopping in at number five overall with 3,811.83 points. This is his third appearance in the top ten this year. The 33-year-old had a great time in Hong Kong recently, finishing fourth in the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Asia Championship of Poker Super High Roller event and 15th in the Main Event. Those scores of 305.14 and 304.43 points, respectively, both counted towards his total, knocking off a couple sub-200 scores.
Of course, O’Dwyer’s rise meant that somebody else had to drop out of the GPI top ten. That somebody was Paul Volpe, who fell from fifth to eleventh.
Five players – Fabian Quoss, Kuljinder Sidhu, Kane Lai, Harrison Gimbel, and Rumen Nanev – entered the GPI 300, with Sidhu and Lai doing so for the first time in their careers. Exiting the GPI 300 (there must be balance in the Force) were Diogo Cardoso, Jesse Sylvia, Jesse Rockowitz, David Stefanski, and Seth Berger.
There is not much time left in 2015 for players to add points to their GPI Player of the Year totals, though the calendar year doesn’t matter for the overall GPI, since it is a rolling score. There are still lots of tournaments left in 2015, though, WPT Prague, the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic, EPT Prague, and some WSOP Circuit events.
Overall GPI Standings – November 18, 2015
1. Byron Kaverman – 4,415.13 pts
2. Jason Mercier – 4,263.66 pts
3. Anthony Zinno – 4,006.85 pts
4. Nicholas Petrangelo – 3,816.52 pts
5. Steve O’Dwyer – 3,811.83 pts
6. Bryn Kenney – 3,795.71 pts
7. Dan Smith – 3,792.67 pts
8. Dominik Nitsche – 3,698.28 pts
9. Kevin MacPhee – 3,694.56 pts
10. Martin Finger – 3,685.07 pts
GPI Player of the Year Standings – November 18, 2015
1. Byron Kaverman – 4,736.90 pts
2. Anthony Zinno – 4,649.07 pts
3. Nicholas Petrangelo – 4,406.04 pts
4. Steve O’Dwyer – 4,333.58 pts
5. Dzmitry Urbanovich – 4,095.19 pts
6. Jason Mercier – 4,076.07 pts
7. Connor Drinan – 3,996.08 pts
8. Dominik Nitsche – 3,848.66 pts
9. Fedor Holz – 3,834.30 pts
10. Scott Seiver – 3,834.10 pts
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