In June a record 160+ TDs from 26 countries attended Poker TDA Summit VI at the fabulous Venetian Las Vegas. These dedicated professionals volunteered time, money, and energy to make their votes count on matters of vital importance to our industry. Thanks to their efforts, the 2013 TDA Rules are in final review and scheduled for release the week of August 5th.

If you attended TDA Summit VI, we would greatly appreciate your sending in any comments or reflections on the event, along with any photos (and description of same) to: [email protected].

To join the on-going discussion on tournament rules and management, visit the Poker TDA Forum. Also, if you would like to earn TDA Certification, click here.

Summit VI was made possible by our gracious hosts at the Venetian Las Vegas. Thanks are due everyone at the Venetian, especially to Kathy Raymond (Director of Poker Operations) and Tommy LaRosa (Tournament Director). Kathy and Tommy made sure the event ran like clockwork and contributed much to the debate during the proceedings.

The generous support of Genesis Gaming and the Global Poker Index (GPI) was also key to the success of Summit VI. Check out all the features of Genesis Bravo Poker and Bravo Poker Live and learn how these cutting-edge systems can help you attract and retain customers! The Global Poker Index is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most important player ranking systems and poker information portals. Visit the GPI website to learn more! Complete video archives of the Summit are available here courtesy of professional poker videographer Rob Perelman.

Lastly, a standing ovation is due our three new extraordinary TDA Board members: Jack Effel, Tab Duchateau, and Neil Johnson. Jack, Neil, and Tab bring years of global tournament experience to enrich the Association. Their leadership at Summit VI confirms the trust that over 2000 TDA members had in unanimously nominating them to the Board!

On behalf of the entire Association, thank you for your attendance at TDA Summit VI. We look forward to hearing from you soon, and will notify you when the 2013 TDA Rules are released.

Men “The Master’ Nguyen
Photo: WhoJedi / LAPC

Today’s Boxscore

Men Nguyen $21,255 – 2013 LAPC $125 No Limit Hold’em Rebuy
Jon Seaman $10,080 – 2013 LAPC 2-7 Triple Draw/No Limit SD
Ryan Wince $29,010 – 2013 LAPC NLHE Doublestack

The big news over the last few days, unless you are Jean-Paul Pasqualini or Cedric Rossi, was the World Series of Poker finally releasing their summer schedule. Some players were getting ansy, now they are all settled down and able to make their plans to invade Las Vegas for the 2013 WSOP, whether they are a small ball newbie or an “every event” grinder.

The series will feature 62 bracelet events along with the standard non-stop non-bracelet side tournaments and their crazy draw. The WSOP always likes to throw something new at their customers (2009 Stimulus Event anyone?) and this year around is The Millionaire Maker on the opening weekend. This tournament will be a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em with two starting flights on the same day and players can re-enter 1B if eliminated in 1A. The big twist is the guaranteed 1st place prize money of $1,000,000 to the winner. Guarantee should be in quotes since the payout structure will be adjusted to make this work, not money added to the standard structure.

Last year’s Big One for One Drop was so successful they will have two smaller versions this summer. The $111,111 One Drop High Roller and $1,111 Little One for One Drop which will feature unlimited re-entries through 4 levels. There is also some pretty decent buzz around for an event which won’t even award a bracelet. The WSOP will run a trial $5,000 Open Face Chinese poker tournament during the Main Event. This is the newest, latest, greatest big thing for the youngns.

Perhaps the biggest change this year is to the Ladies Championship, where now it’s technically a $10,000 event but women will receive a hugely discounted price of $1,000. It’s probably the best way to severely discourage men from entering the tournament as their EV is ridiculous. Poker legend Linda Johnson expects that any man in the event would need to make the final table just to have a positive ROI.

I am interested to see how they handle any issues which arise with post- or pre-operative transgender players trying to enter the tournament. If they’ve made a comment about it, I haven’t seen it.

Back later this week with a more detailed 2013 WSOP schedule rundown later.

Tweet of the Day – Uber Limit guro Matt Matros with his take on the 2013 WSOP schedule.

I’m a very sad poker player tonight. Three Limit HE events (counting Mixed as Limit) taken off the schedule for 2013. #wsop

— Matt Matros (@Matt_Matros) February 15, 2013

Don’t get cheated on the Open-Face Chinese app – Huge news for those playing on the popular Open-Face Chinese Poker app and wagering on the side (as opposed to through the app itself, for now). There is obviously a HUGE security hole, so buyer beware. I’m surprised this hasn’t made a bigger splash but maybe most people already know who they’re playing against and trust them. Barry Greenstein is not one of those people.

Global Poker Index “suspends” two players from the system – GPI savior and guru Alex Dreyfus announced last week they were “suspending” Jean-Paul Pasqualini and Cedric Rossi after some very shady behavior at the 2009 Partouche Poker Tour final table. Seemingly well earned but does this restart the “Standards and Conduct Committee” discussion? Please say no.

Newsjacking and Poker Marketing – Speaking of the GPI, Barry Carter with a look at the trend of “newsjacking” to market a poker product. Not that uncommon or remotely new.

Tech Industry Sets Its Sights on Gambling – Another mainstream media article, this time by the NY Times discussing how online gaming companies are positioning themselves for onling gambling.

The GPI has made tweaks to their ranking system for the new year — primarily by expanding the tournaments that count to include events with buy-ins as low as $1,000.

UPDATE: These changes will apply retroactively for the multiyear GPI, and they started on Jan 1 for the new 2013 POY.

Calling the Global Poker Index the Nate Silver of Poker is probably stretching a bit, but as CardPlayer, Bluff, and all the others release their final tallies of tournament prowess, GPI relies on arguably the most evolved algorithm … and with that, here’s a look at the 20 players who had the best 2012s, even if you didn’t see them on ESPN or FoxSports:

POY 2012			PLAYER	TEAM	SCORE
#1	—		Dan Smith		1158.27
#2	—		Marvin Guido Rettenmaier	PartyPoker	1077.09
#3	—		Bertrand Grospellier	Pokerstars	913.35
#4	—		Kyle Julius		906.02
#5	—		Andrew Lichtenberger		889.57
#6	—		Joseph Cheong		848.91
#7	—		Phil Hellmuth		846.83
#8	—		Jonathan Duhamel	Pokerstars	812.46
#9	—		Jason Mercier	Pokerstars	810.89
#10	—		Stephen O’Dwyer		800.00
#11	—		Justin Bonomo		798.34
#12	—		David Baker		790.71
#13	—		Mohsin Charania		788.15
#14	—		Daniel Negreanu	Pokerstars	768.40
#15	—		Roberto Romanello		752.61
#16	—		Michael Watson		739.40
#17	—		David Sands		736.20
#18	—		Christopher Brammer		723.78
#19	—		John Juanda		714.42
#20	—		Phil Ivey	Ivey Poker	713.44

Move over Carlos Mortenson … Ana Marquez is now the top Spanish player in the world. Playing for almost three years now, the 26-year-old PokerStars pro is the 227th-ranked player on the planet … with some $355k in live tournament winnings … good enough to make her #1 in Spain, and #2 for the 2012 Spanish Player of the Year. Makes for an interesting poker follow and potentially interesting end-of-year race … and she’s cute to boot (not that it should matter, but hey).

Like many of us, she cut her teeth in the American poker underground … and totally quirky, current WSOP Main Event champ Greg Merson who provided her first real-money online stake. Read her story here. And see below how new names emerge as notables on the poker landscape.

LADIES GPI TOP 5

RANK			PLAYER	SCORE
1.	—		Vanessa Selbst	2390.65
2.	—		Melanie Weisner	1546.48
3.	—		Liv Boeree	1371.28
4.	—		Ana Laura Marquez Esteban	1179.05
5.	—		Maria Ho	1129.37

view more

SPAIN GPI TOP 5

RANK		PLAYER	SCORE
1.	—	Ana Laura Marquez Esteban	1179.05
2.	—	Tomeu Gomila	1104.68
3.	—	Carlos Mortensen	943.84
4.	—	Juan Garcia Cid	941.67
5.	—	Cesar Garcia	925.70

view more

Was just checking the GPI … with particular interest in the standings for American Player of the Year … you know, Election Day.  Actually I was curious to see, among other things, what kind of impact a WSOP main event had on player rankings. (Greg Merson moved up.)

But what stood out to me were the poker teams … and the presence of newcomer IveyPoker.

#8	—		Daniel Negreanu	Pokerstars	768.40
#9	—		Jason Mercier	Pokerstars	766.72
#10	—		Bertrand Grospellier	Pokerstars	752.53
#11	—		Joseph Cheong		748.61
#12	—		Jonathan Duhamel	Pokerstars	741.24
#13	—		Michael Watson		720.35
#14	—		Mohsin Charania		718.52
#15	—		John Juanda		714.42
#16	—		Phil Ivey	Ivey Poker	713.44

Long gone are the days of Full Tilt and PokerStars commandeering the WSOP main event final table. But will an online site bearing the name of the 11th best American this year be able to step in and successfully fill the Full Tilt void for US players?

More…

Gary Wise has an interesting piece about some action going down on the Global Poker Index.
It involves Pokerati non-fave Daniel Negreanu and some bets he’s making on where he’ll end the poker year (i.e. right before the start of th 2013 WSOP).

Check it out: http://www.globalpokerindex.com/negreanu-bets-on-gpi/

Forget bracelet bets — though we all can wonder if the Pokerstars pro woulda given these numbers any such validity were it still a product of Epic Poker. You gotta figure Negreanu has crunched and recrunched the numbers to believe he’s good — algorithmically, at least. The bet he’s offering is that he will move up 11 spots (he’s currently ranked 31st in the GPI 300) to crack the Top 20 by the end of May. Likewise, he’s giving 3.5:1 saying he’ll finish in the Top 10.

All fine and dandy on-the-felt … ooh, excitement, he’s all in with two cards to come, Vince! … and I know for poker pros it’s all about the money. But you can’t help but feel the needling undercurrents if any wagers related to Negreanu’s GPI rank becomes a story — or at least a subplot — moving toward the WSOP. Because, boy, can’t you imagine the chaff to Annie Duke’s hide if Negreanu (of all people) proves capable of profiting off the pride-and-joy player ranking system she created.

(The GPI, of course, no longer has anything to do with Annie since being salvaged from the Epic Poker rubble heap.)

Over in Europe, Spain’s economy might be regularly on the brink of collapse, but that doesn’t prevent poker players from all over Europe from hitting Casino Barcelona with a €10k EPT main event buy-in. Turns out a Belarusian won it for about a million euros, and a rising American star took home nearly the same for his performance in the €50,000 Super High Roller event.

Spanish poker players, of course, turned out to be gracious hosts. Here are the top Spanish players, according to the newly recharged Global Poker Index:

GPI TOP 100 ( SPAIN)

GPI		RANK		PLAYER	TEAM	SCORE
#270	(+1)	1.	—	Carlos Mortensen		1109.51
		2.	—	Juan Manuel Pastor		1005.91
		3.	—	Adria Maria Balaguer		1002.25
		4.	—	Cesar Garcia		944.89
		5.	(+1)	Ana Laura Marquez Esteban		873.62

See the rest on the list here.

I still couldn’t begin to explain how this point system works differently than others, really, nor the difference between the GPI Top 100 and the GPI POY. (The latter is just 2012, while the other factors in 2 or 3 years of results, maybe?) Either way, Cesar Garcia is #1 on that list, while Ms. Ana Laura Marquez Esteban is #5 in both places … so you should probably know that.

Poker World reconstruction moves forward … not just off the felt, but on it, too. Taking a quick scan of the current GPI 300, the name that stood out to me as in a “holy heck he’s not just good he’s apparently really good” is Matt Marafioti.  Who knew?! A kid putting himself at the center of poker controversy while declaring cheating to be alive and well but chivalry to be definitively dead … presuming he doesn’t end up in a ditch or arctic fjord in the near future, @adzizzy’s presence on the Global Poker Index is a reminder that a new generation of poker players — top poker pros — really is upon us. (LOL those damn Millenials!) Remember the days when Phil Hellmuth’s whining and Mike Matusow’s psychological instabilities were enough to entertain us? They seem quaint by comparison.

Also interesting to see how few Full Tilt pros are on the list. So many players who we once believed were anything and everything maybe really weren’t? Or at least aren’t any longer, without your money to buy them into $20,000 televised sit-n-go’s.

Considering the number of pros here born in the 80s (and even 90s, soon) … a new era, new generation, new rules … welcome poker’s new wave?

Phil Ivey recently dropped off ESPN’s admittedly subjective player rankings, The Nuts. ESPN’s was the last of such lists to still include the self-exiled Full Tilt Pro in their Top 10. (Homers.)

I found this out via PartTime Poker, which seems to be doing a pretty cool monthly bit over there — breaking down player standings across four different ranking systems, each with their own calculation biases and level of subjectivity in determining the best poker players in the world.

Perhaps surprisingly, I still recognize most at least half of the 21 names comprising the four different Top 10s … but I’ll bet the rest of the world surely doesn’t. There’s a reason, after all, Jason Mercier doesn’t even have a Q-score.

So with subjectivity in mind … best player, winningest player, field strength, skill measurement, tournament luck, run-good ratios, late position likability, backer’s credit score …