This license plate might make a nice inclusion in a more-real Poker “Hall” of Fame some day; for now we get Linda Johnson but not her car.

Congrats are in order for Linda Johnson and Barry Greenstein, as WSOP officials announced earlier today that they won the ballot race this year — and will be inducted into the Caesars-owned Poker Hall of Fame during the November Nine.

I still haven’t been able to find the actual “hall” anywhere on Google maps, but hey, at least there’s a list … which is included in the announcement below. Fwiw, whether right or wrong or historically consistent or not, a 2011 nomination (and subsequent induction) does seem to come with an extra stamp of approval for poker careers run on a clean path.

Barry seems incredibly deserving for his accomplishments mostly on the felt, with a little bit of important poker work off of it. He got 3 of my 10 votes.

Linda got 5 from me. Only the second women bestowed with the PHOF honor, she put up admirable numbers back in the day and still plays winning poker in medium-big mixed games during the WSOP … but really helped shape the direction of poker off the table as publisher of CardPlayer Magazine through the ’90s, a founding member of the TDA and PokerGives.org, and an instrumental force in the World Poker Tour, the PartyPoker Million, the general concept of “poker cruises”, and the Women in Poker Hall of Fame (which doesn’t have a hall either, but does have a fancy dinner with speeches, food, and booze; I do miss the grander fete for PHOF induction way-back in 2009 when Mike Sexton got in). Extra-charming to know the job she quit to pursue a career in poker was at the post office.

Scotty Nguyen got my remaining 2 votes, but did not get in.

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Mark and Matt are finally talking about more than just Full Tilt this week with stories from around the poker legal landscape. They also discuss the Poker Hall of Fame nominees as well as the WSOP-E prelims.

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Well, the buck torch has been passed and it has fallen upon me to summarize the latest and greatest happenings in tournament poker. Seeing as how the last entry was pre-WSOP, I will take it upon myself not to pick-up we Pokerati left off, choosing instead to focus on the past few days…during which time millions were pocketed in prize money.

The Australian Poker Hall of Fame Adds a T.D.
Casino Grand Lisboa, Macau, China

Danny McDonagh

At the commencement of the Macau Poker Cup: Red Dragon, it was announced that Danny McDonagh had been inducted into the Australian Poker Hall of Fame.

Ok, so he didn’t win big bucks in a grueling tournament, but being the the first non-player to be inducted into the Australian Poker Hall of Fame is a big win in my book. McDonagh is considered the leading Tournament Director authority in the Asia-Pacific region and works officially as the PokerStars Director of Live Operations. This man makes it happen and is credited for having one hell of an impact on poker tournaments worldwide. What has he done, you ask? Just the biggest events in the region, including the Aussie Millions, Asia Pacific Poker Tour, and Macau Poker Cup series at PokerStars Macau. Well played, Sir.

Operation USA Scores $53,800 in an Epic Show of Generosity
Epic Poker Charity Event – The Palms Las Vegas, Las Vegas NV

On August 7th, Epic Poker held its first charity poker tournament as part of its Inaugural Event. While Andy Frankenberger mowed down the likes of Gavin Griffin, Dwyte Pilgrim, Justin Young, and Mike McDonald, the big winner of the evening was Operation USA, through whom 100% of the $53,800 raised will benefit the victims of the tornadoes that devastated Joplin, Missouri.

While I’m not really sure exactly how many people played in the charitable event, I have it on pretty good information (I read it on the Epic Poker website) that the total funds raised included all of the $200 buy-ins and rebuys and an additional $2,000 that Frankenberger donated to the the cause out of his $2,500 First Place prize money. Way to raise the bar, Andy!!! I hope others follow the example you have set. Frankenberger didn’t walk away empty handed though, he was the first person to ever receive the Epic Poker Champion’s bracelet and Champion’s Ring.

You again!!! Crane Ships it at Borgata a Second Time
$300K Guaranteed Deep Stack Double Play- Borgata, Atlantic City NJ

Russell Crane - March 30, 2011 | Photo by Jay WhoJedi Newnum

Borgata’s Deep Stack Double Play was a scheduled 4-day No Limit Hold’em poker tournament that began on August 7, 2011. Even in these lean times, Borgata managed to attract 400 players to pay the $1,650 buy-in during the course of the double day entry period for a shot at the $300,000 guarantee, doubling the prize pool to a whopping $600,000.

Russell Crane AKA “rcrane082985″ beat out 399 poker players to secure a repeat shoutout here on Pokerati and, in doing so, made a little extra pocket change to the tune of $148,704. This 23 year old is on a serious heater. This latest score marks his third 1st place finish in a row since winning $37,308 in $1,000 NLH Deepstack at the Foxwoods Poker Classic on March 30th. Keep an eye out for this one… I’m willing to lay odds that he on route to Connecticut.

Saucedo Gets Max EV for Pocket 3s in the Mega Millions
Legends of Poker Mega Millions Event – The Bicycle Casino, Bell Gardens CA

Fausto Saucedo | Photo by Marie-Lizette C. Acoba

The Bicycle Casino kicked off its annual Legends of Poker signature series with a $1,000,000 Guarantee for the mind-blowingly low buy-in of $250 (plus an $100 optional rebuy). It took 20-flights spread over ten days, but when all was said and done, a total of 7,239 players, including Maria Ho, Tiffany Michelle, Cuong (Soi) Nguyen, Scott Clements, Frankie O’Dell, and Brent Carter took a shot (or two, or three, or more) at the guaranteed $300K for first.

With a record number of entries, bested only by the WSOP, and 5,939 rebuys, the prize pool bloated to an astronomical $1,453,811 (that’s a lotta bank for your buck). Former WSOPC Ladies Event Champ, Greg Sessler (invested for nine bullets) found himself heads-up against admitted Moneymaker Effect protégé Fausto Saucedo, and was poised for the biggest cash of his poker career. However, it was not meant to be. After a 4-hour long heads-up rollercoaster ride, Saucedo claimed the Wild Bill Hickok trophy and $340,191 worth of bragging rights when his pocket 3s bested Sessler’s A/J off, all-in pre.

Season One – Tournament Series One Goes to Chino Rheem
Epic Poker League Main Event – The Palms Las Vegas, Las Vegas NV

If you don’t know that David “Chino” Rheem won a Million Dollars in the 6-Max Epic Poker Inaugural Event, you may want to crawl out from under the rock you’re living under. If you didn’t follow along on Twitter, Facebook, or EpicPoker.com, poker-trivia whiz Kevin Mathers recapped the 4-day event from “Way Outside” right here on Pokerati.com.

David "Chino" Rheem | Photo by Marie-Lizette C. Acoba

The exclusive No Limit Hold’em tournament was only open only to Epic Poker League members and 9 Pro/Am Qualifier Main Event seat winners, but still drew an impressive 137 players to pay the $20,000 “no-rake” buy-in. Although it was disclosed that $400 from each buy-in would go to pay the dealers, the $400,000 added to the prize pool negated the expense guaranteeing that 18 finalists would get a minimum 5-figure piece of $3,085,200.

The star-studded final table began on Friday, August 12th with Hasan Habib in the lead, Erik Seidel, Chino Rheem, Gavin Smith, Jason Mercier, and short-stack Huck Seed rounded out the final 6. Seed did what he could to rally from behind, and after a third of the total final table hands had been dealt, he was back in the game until Mercier sent him packing in 6th place, followed by crowd favorite Smith in 5th. Early in the match Rheem crippled Habib’s stack, then dealt the final blow sending Habib to the rail in 4th place. Seidel, having won several high-roller events this year got Mercier out of the way and it was heads-up: Rheem vs. Seidel. The two traded the lead on more than one occasion, and both the grand-stand sweaters and twitter rail were kept on the edge of their seats while the button past back and forth like a ping-pong for 50 some-odd hands. Both Seidel and Rheem made exceptional showings, but in the end the $1,000,000 and Championship ring went to Rheem (and his eager creditors).

The Second Time is a Charm at Foxwoods
Mega Stack Challenge Poker – Foxwoods Resort & Casino, Mashantucket, CT

Sal Morello | Photo by Jay WhoJedi Newnum

Salvatore Morello redeemed himself on August 14th, after coming in second place in the Foxwoods Spring into Summer Mega Poker Championship last month, by claiming first place in the Foxwoods $600 Mega Stack Challenge event. Morello beatout 499 players, and single-handedly eliminated 5 of the 9 final tableists (including runner-up Ronnie Pease, who maintained the chiplead for the majority of the 2-day event) to claim the trophy and the first place prize of $60,202.

Across the Pond, Fintan Gavin Won the UKIPT Edinburgh
UK & Ireland Tour – Edinburgh Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, GB

Fintan Gavin, Winner's Photo

The last, but not least of this week’s Big Winners, Fintan Gavin is the first Irish champion of the 2nd Season of the PokerStars UK & Ireland Tour. The UKIPT attracted a field of 519 poker players in the £500 Main Event, creating a prize pool of £251,715.

When it got down to heads-up, I suspect people had their money on Gavin. A veteran at the felt, Gavin showed Hawksby (playing his first live tournament) how it’s done, grabbing the title and £61,500 in prize money. With $1.2 million in live cashes, Gavin is an old hand and is one of the organisers of Irish Poker Championships.

Episode 23
The Rabbit Hunt is here, with special guest Corwin [vital]myth Cole and they’re talking about the latest WSOP-C and WPT news, Poker Hall of Fame inductees, the latest poker court cases in South Carolina and Illinois, and Ladbrokes Poker’s new anonymous tables.

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Huff, Dan, Jess, BJ, and even Stapleton (with the return of the Tight Laydown?):

The Poker Beat: October 24, 2010

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• Poker Hall of Fame inductees Harrington and Seidel, age-minimum debates, and comparisons to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
• Anonymous tables at Ladbrokes
• Crespo’s Illinois online poker lawsuit — significant or frivolous?
• More on WSOP-C’s new power and purpose?
• WPT-Festa al Lago FT, Randall Flowers, and the Jess & BJ Show
• Phil Ivey is gay? Craps + multi-phallus fellatio promises at the Wynn

This Week:

Ty Stewart — new WSOP stuff, Poker Hall of Fame, more WSOPE bracelet debate.
Matt Savage — WPT-Bellagio/Festa al Lago.
Matt Affleck — more WPT-Bellagio/Festa, Washington State, 15th place at WSOP.
Trishelle Canatella — beauty quiz + poker.

Watch the show, and readmore here.

Just a quick post in case you haven’t already heard, but the WSOP has announced the Poker Hall of Fame Class of 2010. The winners, Dan Harrington and Erik Seidel, are almost exactly at least pretty close to the choices that this non-voting member made in a series on the subject last month, but is actually exactly how the Pokerati non-scientific poll voted this time around.

Both these players boost incredibly long resumes and seem very deserving of the honor. Dan Harrington is the 1995 Main Event champion and has made the final table of said Main Event a staggering 4 times, including back-to-back appearances in 2003 and 2004. His books are probably what he’s most known for by many that have entered the poker world post-boom, and has helped many players get through their first few tournaments knowing the basics. Erik Seidel doesnt have the books to go for, but he can point to his bracelets instead to show why he is being inducted. 8 WSOP bracelets, helping launch Full Tilt, and his impact for being in “Rounders” all gave the voters good reason to vote him in. He may have taken some heat in some circles for being a vocal critic of hole card cams, but if his tournament record post-boom is any indication it doesn’t seem to have affected him that much.

Congratulations to both Harrington and Seidel for their induction into the Poker Hall of Fame! Two very deserving individuals get in, and the countdown to electing Phil Ivey at age 40 goes down another year.

Voting is closed. Your votes never really counted anyway, nor probably should they, because they don’t match up very closely with how my blue-ribbon 10/330 went. Frankly, I have a feeling the Pokerati masses can be asses will come much closer to how the real 2010 Hall of Fame inductions go. As for now, around these parts, Harrington and Seidel are clear frontrunners:

(In the real voting top two get in.)

Dan Harrington – 157
Erik Seidel – 97
Linda Johnson – 56
Phil Ivey – 54
Barry Greenstein – 49
Tom McEvoy – 25
Chris Moneymaker (write-in) – 20
Scotty Nguyen – 20
Chris Ferguson – 16
Daniel Negreanu -12
Jennifer Harman – 4

In the last article we looked at the last four candidates for Poker Hall of Fame. So now its time to break down the votes that each player would get depending on the criteria of the hall, as well as some other fairly easy to determine metrics. What I will do is look at each criteria and metric and see who has the “edge”, similar to how its done in sports matchup previews.

The Hall of Fame’s criteria are:

• Player must have played against known top competition
• Played for high stakes
• Played consistently well, gaining respect of peers
• Stood the test of time
• Contributed to the overall growth and success of the game (this normally applies to non-players, but I think players should help in this aspect as well)

Some additional criteria to consider include:

• Tournament Success
• Cash Game Success
• Depth of Poker Knowledge (NLHE specialist vs. mixed game master)
• And..finally…public perception (because this is really important these days)

But, of course, there is a little battle to settle. While Dan Harrington and Erik Seidel cleared the hurdle, Barry Greenstein and Scotty Nguyen are neck-and-neck, so before we can do anything we have to settle a simple question, who (in my mind) is worthy of a vote?

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In this third part of the series, its time we go through the last four pros that are up for the Poker Hall of Fame. There haven’t really been any misses in this group thus far, sure, a couple people that have no chance given the current roster of nominees, but no complete misses. That said, we haven’t completed the list yet, and parts one and two are available if you need a refresher of what has been said so far. Here are the top three thus far:

• Dan Harrington: 9
• Barry Greenstein: 7
• Phil Ivey: 6

But with 4 more people to go, none of these players are safe (well, three people need to get 10s in order to knock our Harrington, but you get the idea.) The last four are Tom McEvoy, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, and Erik Siedel.

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The Poker Hall of Fame voting is upon us, and with only two weeks until voting closes, its time to look at three more nominees for induction. Last time Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, and Jennifer Harman were analyzed and picked apart, ultimately resulting in a single number signifying my personal feeling toward that player’s admission to the hall. Overall, the three players received the following scores:

• Chris Ferguson: 4
• Barry Greenstein: 7
• Jennifer Harman-Traniello: 2

This time around we look at Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, and Linda Johnson, and you can see how they stack up after the jump.

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With the 2010 Hall of Fame voting underway amongst readers of Pokerati, it makes sense to try and take an objective look at the players to see what their contributions have been and whether they merit entry into the Hall come November. Now, there are standards that all voters are expected to consider during the process, and I hope to reflect that throughout this series. With that said, it does make sense to put up some stats on each player before delving into the reasons for why I would/wouldn’t vote for them, so here are the categories I will look into:

• Age (because I am a proponent of the Chip Resse Rule)
• Time active in poker as a professional
• Recognized Tournament/Cash Stakes played at both peak of performance and now
• Tournament Accolades (WSOP/WPT/EPT Titles/Cashes, relevant important other tournament wins)
• Contributions off the felt

At the end of each candidate I will add my own personal thoughts as well as how many points I would give a particular person (out of 10) if I felt like I just had to vote for the candidate on the ballot. Just for reference, I think I need to at least explain the “final score” a little bit. If a 1 is “Not Deserving” and a 10 is “Should have already been inducted”, and the other numbers are varying degrees between the two extremes. A 5 would be that they are deserving of entry in the hall, but not necessarily this year. So you can do the math to figure out where things far. At the end of this series, I will take the three highest point totals and use that to determine who I would vote for on my ballot for this year’s HoF class. I may not have a vote, but I might be able to help persuade others that may.

Because of the obvious length this would inevitably be if I did all 10 players in one go; I’ll be going in alphabetical order in a four part series. The first three, which you can see by clicking below, are Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, and Jennifer Harman(-Traniello).

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Not that it means anything, nor that we’re gonna horserace this … but just a little indication how Pokerati’s early adopters see things. Results from the first batch of votes we’ve gotten in Pokerati’s Mock Hall of Fame selection process:

Harrington – 81
Seidel – 56
Ivey – 54
Johnson – 33
Greenstein – 30
McEvoy – 20
Nguyen – 15
Negreanu – 9
Ferguson – 12
Harman – 0

Click here to cast your mock ballot if you haven’t already.
Note: We’ve added a spot for write-ins and for you to leave your Twitter ID!

Of the 33 ballots tabulated, two had to be thrown out, which should be a bummer for Scotty Nguyen, since he had the most among the illegitimate points, and I don’t mean that in any sorta racist way.

You know, when Scotty does get in, you can imagine much will be made of his whole “Baby” shtick. That right there tells me something, as it would be much more “adorable” coming from a withering inductee in his 70s than an active player apparently getting paid in product for his sponsorship deal with Jheri curl.

With age always relevant in the Hall of Fame selection process, naturally, @BJNemeth and I couldn’t resist a Socratic dialogue competitively pissing in the wind about the meaning of the emphasized phrase this year:

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Jess, Huff, and I had a small-group Poker Beat pow-wow on Sunday, where one of the topics was who we like for the Hall of Fame in 2010. I probably shoulda looked at the actual ballot before the show. Knew there were some changes but didn’t understand exactly what was different …

The revised 2010 scoring system gives each of the 33 voters 10 points … to be designated however seems fitting among up to 3 nominees. The two highest point totals get inducted. Definitely like the improvements, but have sent an email seeking clarification on how the mysterious “governing council” Seth and Alan taking the interns out for beers might handle ties. Also curious how someone like Henry Orenstein would ever get considered in the future.

Rules Are Official, Mock Ballot Is Not

Below are rules from the official ballots, which went out Friday to the 16 living PHOF members and 17 on the “Blue Ribbon Media Voting Panel”. Take a look … (interesting to me the stress put on “this year”) … then cast your own Pokerati Mock Hall of Fame ballot to see how you like the new system, and where we line up with final results.

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It’s just a list, but a fun and important one … the Class of 2010 to be considered for the Poker Hall of Fame presented by Jack Link’s Beef Jerky. Er, wait a minute, scratch that last part. You mean there’s no sponsor plausibly affecting the outcome of how things get inked into the record books? Next thing you’re gonna tell me is there’s no Jungleman or Durrrr. Wha’? Didn’t you see him get 2nd place!?! I mean the old guy, not Jungleman. He’s not even 21 yet, so that’s understandable that he shouldn’t be eligible ’til next year. OK, anyways …

Here are the names being considered this go-round … on first glance I don’t see any insta-scratches … so all 10 get at least a shake:

CHRIS FERGUSON
BARRY GREENSTEIN
JENNIFER HARMAN-TRANIELLO
DAN HARRINGTON
PHIL IVEY
LINDA JOHNSON
TOM McEVOY
DANIEL NEGREANU
SCOTTY NGUYEN
ERIK SEIDEL

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