The World Poker Tour (WPT) announced last week that it has inked a deal with the Global Poker Index (GPI) which will the see the WPT use the GPI’s ranking system for the Season XIII WPT Player of the Year race.
In a press release, WPT President Adam Pliska said, “I applaud Alexandre Dreyfus and the Global Poker Index for taking positive steps to professionalize the sport. The GPI ranking system will allow more WPT players, regardless of the WPT offering they choose, to participate in the Season XIII Player of the Year race and provide better indicators for players throughout the entire season.”
Historically, the World Poker Tour only counted tournaments from its “main” tour (you know, the events you read about) when determining the Player of the Year. Starting with Season XIII, which gets underway in a couple of weeks, players can earn points on the Player of Year leaderboard by playing on the main tour, in WPT National and Regional Events, in the WPT500, and in WPTDeepStacks events.
GPI Chief Executive Officer Alexandre Dreyfus also expressed his excitement for the deal in a press release, but really just used the opportunity to promote another GPI product. “I’m thrilled to expand our relationship with the World Poker Tour and to help promote the WPT as a whole,” he said. “In the United States, the success of fantasy games correlates strongly with the popularity of many sports, and we believe the same rings true for poker. Our Fantasy Poker Manager advocates engagement from both hardcore and casual fans of the game.”
The Global Poker Index uses a fairly complex formula to determine who is currently the best live poker tournament player in the world, or, more accurately, who has been the best tournament player over the past 36 months. The GPI’s formula uses a number of factors to come up with a player’s score for a given event, including the number of players in the field, the buy-in, and when the event was held. To prevent overly large tournaments (for example, the World Series of Poker Main Event) or overly rich buy-ins (another example, the million dollar Big One for One Drop) from skewing the scores too much, caps are applied to these factors.
The aging factor is one of the more interesting aspects of the GPI formula. With the aging factor, as one might assume, the most recent tournament results are given more weight than those further in the past. The GPI formula divides the past 36 months into six 6-month increments; the most recent half-year periods have a higher aging factor than those at the back end of the last three years. Once a tournament is more than three years old, a player longer gets credit for his finish in that event.
In order to qualify for a score in the Global Poker Index, a tournament must have a buy-in of at least a dollar and a field of at least 21 players and, of course, the player must finish in the money.
