blonde poker forum

thoughts welcome. there have been various incarnations of team and league events in poker...here is nthe latest try from GPI

http://www.globalpokerindex.com/corporate/blog-global-poker-league-next-piece-puzzle-sportify-poker/

"These initiatives are powerful, but not enough to achieve the end goal: to Sportify Poker in full. The missing piece? ‘Sports formatted’ poker events controlled and run by GPI. Fully sportified events that exist in a larger framework – a league – with no gambling and the power to attract mainstream sports and news media.

    World Cup

Our Global Poker Masters (GPM) is a first step. Labelled “Poker’s World Cup” and slated to be held in early 2015, GPM brings the top eight Poker Countries in the world together to compete. With five elite national players per team GPM will be livestreamed internationally across dozens of prominent sports sites. We have clear precedents – Tennis has the Davis Cup, Football has the World Cup, and Poker has the Global Poker Masters. On a personal level I can’t wait to see what happens when ‘Team France’ runs into ‘Team USA’.

    Professional League

Our next step in 2015 is to launch the last piece of the GPI puzzle – the Global Poker League (GPL). It’s our most ambitious (read: risky) project to date and one capable of creating uniquely sportified poker content build for mainstream digital sports and news media.

GPL will be Poker’s professional league. The initial vision is to have a series of live events akin to a sports season co-hosted by international poker events, with between six to eight different franchises (poker teams) competing against one another with initial seasons lasting a short three to four months. Unlike the Global Poker Masters – where teams are comprised of each Nation’s top 5 available players – GPL teams will consist of “draftable” players from GPI’s Rankings and wildcard entries. I’ve already presented this concept, and terms for participation, to a number of prospective future team owners. It’s been an extremely positive experience – reception has been warm across the board and we’ve already had a number of commitments from intrigued future ‘franchise’ owners. Commitments from leading figures from both in front of and behind the felt are rolling in too.
Vision

Tie all of these things together, and you have GPI’s grand vision – rankings, connected to digital sports distribution, Poker’s World Cup in the form of GPM, a professional league with GPL, fan engagement via Fantasy Poker Manager, with Awards and Industry conferences as added threads.

In short – a new authority, sports vertical, and a fully realized marketing vehicle for the world’s live poker ecosystem. One that doesn’t compete with any existing poker stakeholders but rather empowers them to grow alongside.We want to create a new overarching layer to this industry capable of serving the poker space as a whole."


Plenty of marketing industry buzzwords to go at!

Bottom line is that poker is fun to play, but extremely boring to watch unless it is edited highlights.  Watching 10 hours of a poker tournament would be like watching paint dry to the casual viewer.

Plus they'll end up picking players like TJ Cloutier and Annie Duke, so who cares?

Next stop, the Olympics ;)

What a load of old bollocks.

Keith's got the commentary on this announcement covered.

I might be the only one, but I actually like the idea  ;cheerleader;

Who is financing this?

Keith?

I find the whole concept of GPIs involvement in poker odd the whole way. I've never really understood their agenda and what they are trying to do and more importantly, why? Poker and sports are different. Unless you get sponsors in who are going to provide the whole prize pool then it is always going to be shoehorning poker into a sports format.

Personally I'd rather see it the other way. How putting sports into a poker format. For example, top tennis players playing for 100k per game vs each otherr? The money has to be kept at the side of the court in cash and is handed over after each set. How would Murray do if he is stuck and steaming and down three sets to love?

I have been telling people I'm an athlete for ages.  Finally going to get it through!!!

I am a little bit confused by the business model as well.  It's close to my heart as in a previous role I had numerous discussions with regard to the business that did that London Eye thing, International Poker Federation and whether their was a model where content could be monetised.  That has to be the aim, and it has to be the aim of GPI - either to monetise content (editorial, data, events) or move sideways into a play at live events or an online poker room.  The later seems unlikely.

I struggle to see how content can be monetised, as did the (big) commercial brains at the time, in simple terms driven by some of the comments made earlier - the game has little mass appeal and if it did stars, WPT etc would already of exploited.   I guess the only other angle would be if the portal, fantasy league, and associated content could drive enough traffic to monetise through online advertising, whilst I have no info on the traffic that Hendon Mob and GPI sites drive my instinct is there would have to significant increase to make advertising a viable commercial option.  The other angle is obviously the whole fantasy sports thing has taken of in the US and maybe they think that's an angle; again not to sure how it competes with NFL, Baseball etc.

Be interesting to see how it pans out....

Well they bought the hendon mob database, so presumably thing that is important, though it isn't really a case of having proprietary content, more a case of nobody else can be bothered to accurately document live poker results. But a lot of people use that site and therefore they get hits. So what will they do with that? To achieve something there has to be meaning and therefore someone has to be number one. The thing that tennis has to its advantage over poker, to continue with the analogy, is that in tennis the same guys get to the semi finals most weeks, whereas in poker tournaments every final table is different and even a world class player might be expected only to win one or two tournaments a year at best. So there is no story and no great rivalries. The only thing with any history in poker is WSOP, you can't really manufacture that out of thin air, you need many years.

In the GPI rankings there really can only be someone who plays super high rollers who can be number one. So that's really only 30 or so people, so there is something artificial that keeps the rankings repetitively static. Not to take anything away from people like Ole Schemion of Vanessa S who are obviously sick good at poker, but mentioning no names, even some former business guy who plays all the high rollers and has a huge negative ROI can be neat the top 'in the world'. So what do these rankings mean? Well very little.

I also don't see how at all how it can be monitised either. You can achieve influence and maybe that can be leveraged somehow? There are even other similar sites, one called Ranking Hero.

I have no interest whatsoever in how Team France does against Team USA. Why should I?

Don't get it/

This thing all falls down because who are the top 5 players in each country? In other sports the top performers are more consistent - if there's a competition to find the best tennis player in Serbia, I'd be pretty confident that Djokovic is going to win nearly every single time.

But poker - it doesn't work like that. Either the top 5 players are going to change all the time because variance, or, in order to get the same players every time (to build brand, player recognition etc), the system will be gamed to favour the usual characters playing big money tournaments (usually not with their own money).

This does all sound very ambitious - have they hired Wembley Stadium yet?

This

Can we get HSP back?

yes!

and the annie duke/cloutier comment is so bangon

I'm about the biggest naysayer of this you will find, but to be honest I think it's got a chance. I think it's totally wrong for poker and massively at odds with where online poker is trying to go but at least he's trying to do something innovative with the game. Not many others are.

That said this will be ALL about the execution. And there are so many really difficult hurdles they need to overcome to make it work. I just can't see it happening. Maybe if he focused more on cash games than SNGs or made it more online and more like esports with those teams.

Meh. Good luck to him though.

The inaugural Global Poker Masters, deemed poker’s World Cup, will take place on March 21 and 22 during the EPT Malta Festival. The two-day event will feature most of the game’s best players with national pride on the line. It will not conflict with the EPT Malta Main Event as participants will be able to play Day 1B of the Main once the GPM competition will be completed. Eight countries will participate in the Global Poker Masters with each team consisting of five players.

Although the event format has yet to be officially announced, Day 1 will feature a mixed tournament format where participants will compete against players from each other country in a series of single table tournaments. Players will accumulate points for their countries throughout the day. The team with the least amount of points following Day 1 play will be eliminated from the competition.

Day 2 will begin with players continuing to battle for points in heads-up matches. The bottom team will once again be eliminated leading to a six-nation final table for worldwide bragging rights.

“GPI’s is to Sportify the game of poker and the presentation of this innovative event will go a long way towards accomplishing that goal” revealed Global Poker Index Chief Executive Officer Alexandre Dreyfus. “There is no buy-in for the event, we want to create an international competition where players are playing for pride, country and for the love of the game in hopes to showcase the game’s best. Through the GPI, it will create a solid platform for poker to be promoted through new distribution channels and mainstream partners.”

Dreyfus continues: “With the GPI’s association with Swiss watchmaker Roger Dubuis, who will reward GPI Players of the Year in three regions with unique timepieces worth over $50,000, we hope to continue attracting major sponsors in hopes of creating a true “World Cup of Poker” in the coming years.”
QUALIFYING NATIONS

The eight qualifying nations were determined by calculating the number of players ranked in the GPI300 for each country as of December 31, 2014.

While Team USA was the overwhelming #1 nation, a three-way tie between Argentina, Denmark and the Ukraine required a tie-breaker to determine the final team that would be included in the field. In order to break the tie, we calculated the total number of GPI300 points accumulated by the Top 5 players in each country. Lead by Eugene Katchalov, the Ukraine won the tie-breaker and will be part of the eight-nation field:

#1 Team USA: 140 players in GPI300 (46.67%)
#2 Team UK: 25 players in GPI300 (8.33%)
#3 Team Germany: 18 players in GPI300 (6%)
#4 Team Canada: 17 players in GPI300 (5.67%)
#5 Team Russia: 16 players in GPI300 (5.33%)
#6 Team France: 7 players in GPI300 (2.33%)
#7 Team Italy: 6 players in GPI300 (2%)
#8 Team Ukraine: 5 players in GPI300 (1.67%)
NATIONAL TEAM ROSTERS

A total of 40 players will qualify for the Global Poker Masters. Each nation will be represented by five players: the 2014 National Player of the Year, the nation’s Top 3 ranked players on the GPI World Poker Rankings and a wildcard. Criteria for each team’s wildcard will be announced shortly.

Here is a look at each country’s first four qualifiers:

TEAM USA  USA flag

Dan Smith (GPI#2)
Daniel Colman (GPI#5, National Player of the Year)
Pratyush Buddiga (GPI#6)
Jacob Schindler (GPI#7)

TEAM UNITED KINGDOM  UK flag

Stephen Chidwick (GPI#11)
Jack Salter (GPI#29)
Simon Deadman (GPI#34)
Oliver Price (GPI#36, National Player of the Year)

TEAM GERMANY  GER flag

Ole Schemion (GPI#1, National Player of the Year)
Marvin Rettenmaier (GPI#25)
Martin Finger (GPI#46)
George Danzer (GPI#48)

TEAM CANADA  CAN flag

Ami Barer (GPI#4, National Player of the Year)
Sorel Mizzi (GPI#13)
Mike McDonald (GPI#16)
Andrew Chen (GPI#21)

TEAM RUSSIA  RUS flag

Anatoly Filatov (GPI#32, National Player of the Year)
Vladimir Troyanovskiy (GPI#55)
Ivan Soshnikov (GPI#63)
Vitaly Lunkin (GPI#77)

TEAM FRANCE  FRA flag

Erwann Pecheux (GPI#59, National Player of the Year)
Benjamin Pollak (GPI#61)
Sylvain Loosli (GPI#155)
Fabrice Soulier (GPI#174)

TEAM ITALY  ITA flag

Dario Sammartino (GPI#17)
Mustapha Kanit (GPI#41, National Player of the Year)
Andrea Dato (GPI#54)
Giuliano Bendinelli (GPI#170)

TEAM UKRAINE  UKR flag

Eugene Katchalov (GPI#53, National Player of the Year)
Oleksandr Gnatenko (GPI#207)
Artem Metalidi (GPI#218)
Oleksii Khoroshenin (GPI#283)

http://www.globalpokerindex.com/list-of-initial-players-countries-qualified-for-global-poker-masters-2015-revealed/

Team poker is such a load of nomsense.

A poker World Cup with no Scandinavians? #notsureifserious

what do you think about this now it is about to launch?

http://www.globalpokerleague.com/

lots of innovative stuff

a draft

"The full Global Poker League consists of 12 franchise teams from all around the world. Connected to cities with teams expected to hail from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Toronto, Sao Paolo, London, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Moscow and Hong Kong. Teams will be decided announced between November 1st, 2015 & January 20th, 2016."

eg gameplay

"to make the game more engaging & help break Poker’s status quo GPI will highlight a number of new additions to live and online play:

• Live heads up and 6 player matches with time limitations via 30 to 45 minute “action clocks” counting down during each player’s turn (think: the same dynamic as chess clocks during speed chess).

• Players playing standing up rather than seated live in the studio and in The Cube™ to give viewers a new perspective on players emotions, expressions and competitive fight.

• Hybrid digital/ live competition on tables with digital cards and real RFID enabled chips to quicken live play by 4 times compared to conventional live poker gameplay.

• Online matches held on a proprietary poker platform built from the ground up to offer the most inclusive, engaging fan experience and allow room for constant improvement. "

pique any interest or not?

If it does everything that it says it can do and the online streaming platform is slick it'll get tons of interest I reckon

It sounds good, but at this stage it's all a bit too reminiscent of this:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOGFIVPfnMo

...and we all remember how that turned out.

Also, the head guy is currently doing a sterling bit of PR work on Twitter by saying that all players have to stand up whilst playing, even when the question of wheelchair users was raised - sorry Ironside, you can't play.

Ah, I've made the same comment before.

I haven't read the Twitter talk but isn't it fair enough to use a 'we'll cross that bridge when/if we come to it' approach? Only 1000 people are eligible to play and of those only 60 will actually participate.

I was thinking about the action clock idea for online mtts. It might be too much of a change at this point though.