Enshrine This
Sunday, September 13, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
On Friday Michael Jordan was enshrined in the NBA Hall of Fame, and most folks seem to agree that he belongs there. Of course arguing that Jordan, who won six titles and five MVPs and various other medals and trophies, DOESN’T belong in the Hall of Fame will cause people to openly question your sanity and maybe even chase you around the room with one of those oversized butterfly nets. So that you could be transported to a mental-health facility where, truth be told, some of us need to be kept.
Michael Jordan in the Hall of Fame is a no-brainer. And so is selecting John Stockton and David Robinson, who were also enshrined Friday and had the misfortune of entering the Hall when Jordan was there to (once again) overshadow them. But for those who teeter on the border of super-stardom, for those whose careers almost, but not quite, transcend the era, Hall of Fame election-time can be a torment. Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice had to wait until his 15th and final year on the ballot to gain admittance to Cooperstown, and Dick LeBeau, one of the great cornerbacks in NFL history and perhaps the greatest defensive coordinator of all time, may finally get his shot at Canton next year.
In case you weren’t aware, there is a Poker Hall of Fame. Benny Binion created it back in 1979 and it was a tourist attraction at the Horseshoe Casino. Harrah’s acquired the Poker Hall of Fame when it purchased the World Series of Poker and there’s no longer an actual physical location for it, but it’s the WSOP that still elects new members. Last year Dewey Tomko and Henry Orenstein were inducted; the year before Phil Hellmuth and Barbara Enright were enshrined. There are five requirements a player must possess before being considered for the Hall of Fame, and they are:
- A gambler must have played poker against acknowledged top competition
- Played for high stakes
- Played consistently well, gained the respect of peers
- And stood the test of time
- Or, for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results
This year Harrah’s did something a bit different, allowing poker fans to nominate candidates for consideration. The votes were tallied and here are the nine players who find themselves on the ballot:
- Barry Greenstein
- Dan Harrington
- Phil Ivey
- Tom McEvoy
- Men Nguyen
- Scotty Nguyen
- Daniel Negreanu
- Erik Seidel
- Mike Sexton
An august group, to say the least. There’s actually one player who was initially on the ballot who no longer is–Tom “durrrr” Dwan, crusher of online cash games and the star of the most recent High Stakes Poker season. It’s not a huge surprise that Dwan was politely ushered off the stage because one of the criteria for HOF admission is that the player “stand the test of time”, and as Dwan is only 22 he’s got some time to stand. To put things in perspective, Phil Hellmuth won the Main Event three years after Dwan was born, and Chip Reese was the youngest Hall of Fame inductee at 40. Methinks we’ll see the electors return their attention to durrrr in a decade or so.
For the nine who remain on the list a case could be made for all of them to be first-ballot inductees. I’ve heard some people say that perhaps McEvoy’s resume doesn’t compare with the others, but not only did McEvoy win the 1983 Main Event (the first satellite-winner to become World Champion) and win three other bracelets and also write several strategy books, McEvoy was also instrumental in making poker a smoke-free activity. It may seem impossible to imagine now but as recently as 2001 people could smoke at the table at the WSOP, until McEvoy convinced Becky Binion Behnen to make the Series smoke-free. I think that qualifies as a “positive and lasting result”.
So there are nine nominees–does that mean nine players will be entering the Hall? Well, no. There are 30 people who will be voting on who gets in–the fifteen living current members of the Hall and fifteen members of the poker media. I was not asked to be a Hall of Fame elector, and I wasn’t the least bit crushed or devastated or emotionally annihilated by that fact. Each elector votes for three players, and to gain admission the nominee’s name must appear on at least 75% of the ballots. Which could lead to some, ah, complications. As my friend and colleague Martin Harris pointed out, there’s a chance that NO ONE could be elected to the Hall of Fame. Because of the 75% rule a maximum of three players could possibly be elected this year, but the overall quality of the candidates makes it possible that the vote could be split so many ways that nobody reaches that magic 75% mark. As Martin says:
Let’s say five of the nine finalists end up getting a significant number of votes here. In fact, let’s go so far as to say the voters will only be focusing on five guys. Which ain’t gonna happen (each of the other four will probably get at least a vote or two, probably more), but let’s pretend it does.
So the 90 votes would be divided among those five. If divided evenly, none of them will come close to making it, as each will only get 18 votes, or 60% — well shy of the needed 75%. And, like I say, there probably won’t be 90 votes submitted for just five players, as the others will take some of those votes away. There will have to be overwhelming support for one candidate for him to get in, and given the group that has been proposed, the votes might be divided in such a way as to make it hard for that to happen.
From what I’m hearing there’s a real groundswell of support for Mike Sexton to be elected, I wouldn’t be surprised if more than 75% of the voters put a check-mark next to his name. But from there it gets really tough. Maybe the voters will have to flip it around–instead of making a case why they’re voting for so-and-so, they’ll have to explain why they DIDN’T vote for certain players. Chances are many will cross Ivey and Negreanu off their lists because of their age–their time will come, but not this year. Maybe their at-times questionable behavior at the tables will keep 2009 from being a Nguyen-Nguyen situation. Maybe some will say that McEvoy and Harrington don’t have a big enough profile in these celebrity-crazed days. But that sort of thinking could bring us full circle to a situation where the votes are evenly distributed and no one gets elected.
Which could make for a sticky situation for the Hall of Fame, this year and beyond. You have nine excellent players on the ballot this year…what happens when other big names are nominated? When players who aren’t quite on the A-list add to their list of accomplishments? Some of the players on this year’s list might’ve been inducted years and years ago, but the Hall of Fame didn’t add new members every year and now there’s this logjam that promises to get worse before it gets better. But while that might cause some consternation for the players who want to see their names added to the roster of all-time greats, it provides tasty fodder for poker fans (and poker writers) to argue about.
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September 14th, 2009 at 12:31 am
I can see waiting awhile before younger players should be inducted. However, if Ivey takes the Main Event this year, you would think that cements his spot for induction sooner rather than later.