The Poker Hall of Fame Is a Bit of Joke

Yup, I said it.

This is basically what happens when you turn something that was essentially a gimmick for 20 years into something serious, yet don’t fix the underlying issues that made it a gimmick.

To be clear, I love the concept of the Poker Hall of Fame, but I want it to be done right.

Anyone who knows anything about poker history can see there are serious flaws with the list of people in the Poker Hall of Fame after a cursory glance. Wild Bill Hickok is in, yet his contemporaries, Doc Holliday, Alice “Poker Alice” Ivers, George Devol, Canada Bill Jones, Wyatt Earp ,Dick Clark ,Ben Thompson, Frank Tarbeaux, Bat Masterson, and other are not.

This egregious oversight would be like putting Byron Nelson in the World Golf Hall of Fame and none of his contemporaries, or one player from pre-1900 baseball and nobody else. It’s as if the Poker Hall of Fame said, “What, we gave you one token Hall of Famer from that era.”

A Veteran’s Committee could quickly solve this problem and posthumously induct these men and women.

Even worse, this oversight continues pretty much straight up until the early World Series of Poker days. Did nobody play poker until the 1960’s?

Doyle, Johnny Moss, Jack Strauss, Bobby Baldwin, Sailor Roberts, Amarillo Slim, Puggy Pearson, that whole crew… they’re all in the Poker Hall of Fame, but the generation that preceded them and the generation that followed them are almost nonexistent in the HOF.

I think my biggest gripe is that for a Hall of Fame that only came into being in 1979 there certainly are a lot of stipulations and seemingly unbreakable traditions with the Poker Hall of Fame.

For years the induction of just one person per year ruined any chance the Poker Hall of Fame had at fairness. The trailblazers and older players have been relatively overlooked as the HOF tries to get the current best players inducted. Which means a lot of past greats simply get passed by.

They need to take a page out of the Football Hall of Fame and induct seven or eight people every year just to catch up with the extreme backlog of people that deserve to be in. Not two.

Further complicating matters, it’s as if the Poker Hall of Fame (with their new fan voting process) has decided the 1970’s and 1980’s and most of the 1990’s never occurred. If you weren’t among the group of WSOP founders, and you weren’t in your prime when the Poker Boom hit you’re SOL, because the general public has no clue who you are. They’re all waiting for Tom Dwan to be eligible.

A quick look at this year’s nominee list proves that point, as does last year’s list. The casual fan is voting based on popularity. How is Mike Matusow on the list but not Carlos Mortensen? No John Juanda and no David Chiu?

But back to players from the 80’s and 90’s like Ken Flaton, Mickey Appleman, Cyndi Violette, Men Nguyen, Bobby Hoff, Danny Robison, Marcel Luske, Liam Flood, Colette Doherty and a hundred others. How are they ever going to get nominated under the current nomination process that is in place?

Or how about the contributors? Are Anthony Holden or Andy Glazer ever going to get fan votes?

The nomination process is a joke.

Poker needs to really open up the Hall of Fame process. Where does it say any more than two inductees will cheapen the honor?

Induct half a dozen or more people every year if you have to, maybe two people from each different era of the game and a couple contributors. Throw in a couple of international inductees every year. Like I said, create a Veteran’s Committee to get rid of the backlog of Bob Hooks and Bobby Hoff types.

They also need to drop this silly fan voting process pronto. Do what baseball does and require basic minimum requirements for anyone who is on the ballot for the first time and then require these nominees to maintain voting thresholds to keep their name on subsequent ballots.

I’m not saying John Bonetti has to be in the Hall of Fame, but under the current method he simply doesn’t even get a chance to be judged by his peers. Let the Hall of Fame voters decide if 1) John Bonetti belongs in the Hall of Fame and 2) if he deserves to remain on the ballot.

Finally, can we open up the voting a bit? The Poker Hall of Fame needs more voters, not the few dozen it currently uses. That group is far too closed and simply not diverse enough. I don’t understand this adherence to tradition that doesn’t warrant it.

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