Global Poker Masters To Début In Q1 of 2015
On June 4, the CEO of the Global Poker Index (GPI), Alex Dreyfus, unveiled his latest project in the American Poker Awards. Today, June 6, Dreyfus lifted the lid on yet another poker project that he believes is set to become poker’s equivalent of the FIFA World Cup.
The Global Poker Masters is a brand new $10,000 buy-in invitation-only poker tournament that pits the top 36 players from around the world against each other in a team-based event.
Nine teams will be chosen, with each team consisting of four players. The nine teams will be the top nine ranked countries according to the GPI’s closely guarded formula and the four players selected for each team based on their respective GPI Player of the Year points, accumulated over a 12-month period.
Dreyfus explained the format to Giovanni Angioni of PokerNews:
“As this is a team-based event, there is not going to be one single winner at the end of it. Technically, we are going to have four groups, with one player from each country in every group. The event will include a total of 16 sit-n-go tournaments, with players rotating around four different tables every time the tournament they are playing is over.
“Every tournament will give players a certain amount of points according to their placement. The winner of the Global Poker Masters will then be the country that, at the end of the 16th tournament, will have aggregated the highest number of points.”
Dreyfus’ concept of a country-based poker championship is not a new one. Since 2004 there has been an annual World Cup of Poker, which was held in Barcelona until 2009 before becoming part of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure at Atlantis Resort & Casino in the Bahamas. The reigning champions are Russia. A press release on the Global Poker Index website claims this format “is something that’s never been executed with adequate legitimacy or a structure based so purely on poker acumen and competition before until now.”
In addition to the 36 x $10,000 buy-ins, the Global Poker Index is juicing the prize pool with an extra $100,000 meaning the nine teams will play for a share of $4,600,000, much more than the $200,000 currently up for grabs in the World Cup of Poker.
The creation of the Global Poker Masters comes at a time when the worldwide tournament calendar is packed with major events, with many of the rival tours’ events clashing; this is especially true with the World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour. With that in mind, does the poker world need another event? Why did the GPI decide to create the Global Poker Masters?
“Despite Live Poker consistently growing in popularity during the past decade (roughly 15% year over year), we believe we’re on the eve of a second poker boom thanks to the impending regulation and re-emergence of online poker in the United States,” wrote Dreyfus. “To realize this boom though, Poker still needs innovations and greater traction, including new formats and exposure on a larger scale. It also needs to be promoted as a Sport. The time is right to launch the Global Poker Masters because it is capable of doing exactly that. It gives the best of the breed from the world’s top poker nations a stage compete, and it’s an intriguing performance-based format to support.”
Although no date has been set for the inaugural Global Poker Masters, it has been pencilled in to run in North America alongside one of the major events scheduled for 2015 Q1. As the GPI has close ties with the World Poker Tour, we fully expect it to be part of one of their festivals.
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