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The Global Poker Index Player of the Year title has the potential to become the most important recognition for live poker players.
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The Federated Sports & Gaming (FS+G) brought the Epic Poker League (EPL) to life exclusively for the world’s very best players. The top list was not compiled arbitrarily, however; FS+G created the Global Poker Index (GPI) that calculates the scores for the players on a mathematical basis, considering tournament field sizes, entry fees and individual results.
The GPI method and the resulting top list is considered the best, most realistic tournament poker leaderboard currently available, which might be one of the reasons FS+G announced the GPI Player of the Year title, to be given to the best player of 2012 for the first time. The winner of the GPI POY 2012 title will be the owner of an 18 carat “Player of the Year” golden ring.
“Honoring top achievers with a precise and credible Player of the Year race will definitely advance perceptions about poker. Applying the rigorous and objective analysis of the Global Poker Index to this type of award is a significant move forward for the poker community,” WSOP champion Vanessa Selbst commented.
The GPI POY leaderboard will be updated on the first Wednesday of each month.
The first season of EPL has not been living up to expectations, being extremely –EV. The organisers added $400,000 to the prize pool of each of the four main events, in addition to a $1,000,000 freeroll held for the top 27 players. They have hoped to raise funds from sponsorship deals and television licence fees but the current position of poker in the US has scared investors away. FS+G, therefore, plans to sell the show. The GPI POY program, on the other hand, could indeed be successful and may even replace the CardPlayer POY as the most important Player of the Year title, as the latter has been receiving much criticism for its score calculation method for a while.
Current top players of the GPI POY 2012 are the following:
