GPI American Poker Awards Nominees Announced
Last week, the Global Poker Index (GPI) announced the nominees for the inaugural GPI American Poker Awards, selected by a panel of nearly 60 industry insiders. The members of the nomination panel reviewed the nine categories and named two nominees for each. The four names that received the most votes in each category were deemed finalists. A Jury Panel will vote for the winners on the morning of February 27th, the day of the awards ceremony. The members of the Jury Panel are yet to be announced.
It should come as no surprise that the world’s largest online poker room, PokerStars, is sponsoring the GPI American Poker Awards, as PokerStars sponsors pretty much anything poker related. The awards ceremony will be held at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.
Alexandre Dreyfus
In a press release, GPI Chief Executive Officer Alexandre Dreyfus said, “I wish to thank each and every member of the Nomination Panel for taking part in the selection process for this very first edition of the GPI American Poker Awards. We noticed some very interesting trends and I do believe that their selections reflect perfectly with what happened in the North American poker landscape in 2014.”
Here is the complete list of nominees for the 2014 GPI American Poker Awards:
Tournament Performance of the Year
Mohsin Charania, WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic winner
Daniel Colman, Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event winner
Darren Elias, WPT Borgata Poker Open winner
Mark Newhouse, WSOP Main Event, 9th place finisher
Breakout Player of the Year
Daniel Colman
Mukul Pahuja
Jake Schindler
Brandon Shack-Harris
Event of the Year (Category Buy-In Over $2,000)
Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event (Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Hollywood)
WPT Montreal (Playground Poker Club, Montreal)
WPT World Championship (Borgata, Atlantic City)
World Series of Poker Main Event (Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas)
Event of the Year (Category Buy-In up to $2,000)
HPT Cal State Poker Championship (Commerce Casino, Los Angeles)
WPT500 at ARIA (ARIA Resort & Casino, Las Vegas)
WSOP Millionaire Maker (Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas)
WSOP Monster Stack (Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas)
Industry Person of the Year
Jack Effel, WSOP Tournament Director
Adam Pliska, WPT President
Matt Savage, WPT Executive Director & TDA Founder
Ty Stewart, WSOP Executive Director
Poker Media Content of the Year
ALL IN Magazine: Mark Newhouse
Brad Willis, WSOP 2014: Stages/Never stop fighting for PokerStars blog
PokerNews Live Reporting at the 45th WSOP
Jason Somerville for Run it UP!
Charitable Initiative of the Year
“All In” for Kids Poker Tournament presented by CHOP and the WPT Foundation
Charity Series of Poker
REG (Raising for Effective Giving)
WSOP One Drop partnership
Poker Innovation or Initiative of the Year
Poker Night in America
Twitch opens its doors to live streaming poker
WPT successful partnerships with DeepStacks, Hublot, DraftKings, Monster
WSOP Monster Stack event
Media Person of the Year presented by PokerUpdate
Nolan Dalla
Chris Grove
Kevin Mathers
Rich Ryan
The Global Poker Index has already determined several honors for the past calendar year using its proprietary rankings formula. Daniel Colman was named 2014 Player of the Year with 4,194.91 points, narrowly edging Germany’s Ole Schemion, who had 4,125.39 points. He had one of the more incredible live tournament years in recent memory and is clearly the front runner for both the Tournament Performance of the Year and Breakout Player of the Year categories. He won the Super High Roller event at the European Grand Poker (EPT) Grand Final, the WPT Alpha8 London Main Event, and the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event last year and finished in the top three in two other Super High Roller tournaments. His biggest moment, though, came over the summer when he won the million dollar buy-in Big One for One Drop Event at the World Series of Poker, a score of over $15.3 million. Overall, he won nearly $23 million in live tournaments in 2014, just an astounding year.
Naturally, Colman also won the 2014 American Player of the Year title. The GPI’s 2014 Canadian Player of the Year award went to Ami Barer, whose 3,873.15 points also put him in fourth place for the overall Player of the Year race. Vanessa Selbst claimed the honor for Female Player of the Year, earning 2,431.88 points.
Without going into too much detail, the Global Poker Index Player of the Year score for any individual tournament is determined by a “finishing percentage factor” and a “buy-in factor.” Only the top thirteen scores for a player count for any given year. To count in the rankings, a tournament must have a field of at least 21 players, a one dollar minimum buy-in, and the player must have finished in the money.
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