Reading the thread on Rast HOF, this comment made me start a new thread...
"It might be called "Poker Hall of Fame" but I don't think it even wants to be that. That name just sounds way better than "WSOP & Friends Hall of Fame"."

If you look at the 100s of Hall of Fames for sports (probably thousands), and do any type of research, you will find that most all of them are owned/run by independent bodies. Very few, if any, examples exist of a sports HOF that is owned and run by a company that operates in that sport.
And in cases where there might be a conflict of ownership, it looks like independent non-profits or bodies are setup to manage the HOF.

This all makes sense. If you are going to have a "Poker Hall of Fame", the logical conclusion is that an independent body would be formed to define criteria, selection, and overall good of the HOF within poker.

Instead, the PHOF is owned by Caesars/WSOP, and they do whatever they want, how they want, so long as it benefits them. They can dictate how many people go in, and really who they are. The logical conclusion is that, this is, and should be, the WSOP Hall of Fame.

The best example of this is the UFC. They have the UFC HOF, and not the MMA HOF. I dont know why they went down this path, but the comparison is relevant. Whether they were forced to use UFC, or by choice (it is likely a marketing advantage) is unknown. This comparison would be all that more precise if there was an established MMA HOF, which I couldn't find any proof of.

So how do get to something more reasonable than the current setup? The WSOP either re-brands their HOF to the WSOP HOF, which allows them to do whatever they want with it and opens the door for a neutral HOF, or they hand over their HOF to a non-profit that operates the PHOF independently of Caesars/WSOP.

You can start the Rztup Poker Hall of Fame

Nolan Dalla's take

https://www.nolandalla.com/about-the...class-of-2023/

I argued this same point years ago, probably over at PokerRoad. In fact, the WSOP probably should have just started its own Hall of Fame. I get why it didn't, of course, as there would have been two Halls of Fame – one of which would have been dubbed the "real" Hall of Fame.

As is, Dalla sounds like a proponent for what many people push for: two separate categories. One would simply be for great players, the best of the best, the ones who crushed the cash and/or tourney scene for years and years, etc. Obviously, this is where Rast falls, as do most of the inductees over the years.

The other category would be the contributors, a category for the people who have helped grow the game, pioneer some part of it, serve as ambassadors, or otherwise achieved in some significant way that is not otherwise playing it. There are plenty of inductees in that category, dating back to the charter class (e.g. Edmond Hoyle) and many of the people since. Blondie Forbes, Eric Drache, the Binions, Henry Orenstein, Mori Eskandani, etc. This seems to be Dalla's wheelhouse, as he continues to push for Matt Savage and Isai Scheinberg, while applauding the choice of Jack McClelland in a previous post.

Of course, you have a handful of enshrinees who excelled at both. Doyle arguably tops this list, but Bobby Baldwin, Mike Sexton and Daniel Negreanu are in there for both their play and their off-the-felt deeds.

I suppose the flaw of a two-category format would be that the HOF might exclude someone who isn't quite strong enough for either category, but right now are included because the two sides added up to induction. Chris Moneymaker and Tom McEvoy strike me as the examples of this. Neither would go in just for their playing careers, but they also might be more marginal candidates if there was a separate non-playing category.

Still, I'd take that as a drawback compared to the mess we have now. Because right now, poker has maybe the worst kind of Hall of Fame – one that even diehard fans don't really care about.

I think the current Poker Hall of Fame setup is pretty good and carries prestige since it’s so hard to get in.

I don’t think there should be a separate category for contributors. Main reason being after a few years you will run out of good ones. They will end up putting clowns in after a little while. Maybe they’ll have to put me in there for top notch 2+2 posting.

Rather I think if a contributor falls in top 2 or 3, there should possibly be a provision to put them in

They should have created a WSOP Hall of Fame a long time ago. Problem was the WSOP was in a please Doyle at any cost mode in hopes that he comes out for events and press. You could of had an easy inaugural class and then create a simple and easily tracked criteria for getting into the WSOP Hall of Fame. If people have no clue who the "high stakes" crushers were of the 80s-90s-2000s. Then they're really going to struggle to figure out who are the crushers now that everything is private.

A WSOP Hall of Fame, then instead of dishing out bracelets in the Bahamas they could of had their own Winter Festival in Las Vegas "The Hall of Fame" series. Damn near everyone is in town for the WPT anyways so it would of been a good press thing. In true Caesars form they botch this all up.

Nah, if that happens, you just wouldn't have an inductee that year.

That said...

I like this idea. A lot.

There used to be exactly that...the Hall of Fame Classic, played in the later part of the year, was considered the second biggest series of the year. Was in the 90s and early 200s, last I remember.

next poker boom is when someone with a brain buys wsop

Yeah what a bunch of idiots running that now with overflowing capacity twenty years after Moneymaker won

Hall of Fame voting is a joke in all sports.
Perfect example baseball- you need 75 percent of the vote of hundreds of writers. Most of these writers are extremely biased.
Then if you don't get in they have a veterans committee of 15 or so people. Obviously it's way easier for a fringe player to get in this way especially if they're friends with one or two people on the committee who have influence over the other members. Harold Baines got in this way b/c the whitesox owner and his former manager are both on the committee and love the guy.

I think we'd all agree the current poker hof system is flawed. But that has nothing to do with WSOP owning it.
Human beings are flawed and biased. Voting is subjective. It's never going to be a flawless system.

Lol Caesars does many things in a very stupid manner. The WSOP isn't one of them.

This post reminds me of "the rake is too high for these events" guys as people wait 3 hours in line to register.

Lol my favorite was the guy crying about the idiotic marketing team

Every single time I’m walking down the hallway I have to walk around people getting their picture taken in front of the big WSOP sign. They have an endless supply of lemmings signing up trying for a bracelet

It's quite amusing. There are seriously non- rich people who would rather win a bracelet for 100k in profit then come in 10th in some other event for 250k profit.

Imagine being happier on a day where you won 5,000 dollars playing cash bc you won the most at the table than you are another day where you won 10,000 dollars bc somebody else at the same table won more than you.

You might enjoy this video, if you haven't already:

Thanks for posting this.
Apparently this guy also umpired and once ejected Ty Cobb.

In the 60s and book came out called Glory of their Time about turn of the century players.
There's audio of the players in their 80s and 90s being interviewed for this book.

Some guy ended up getting in the HOF bc one of the players being interviewed told a bunch of lies that weren't discovered until he (or maybe a teammate of his?) got elected and was dead.

That Bobby Wallace was a really good fielding shortstop, which is the most important position defensively except pitcher and maybe catcher. He also had high percentages of walks and extra base hits. He probably doesn't belong in the HOF, but is not that far fetched.

Yeah, the Baseball HOF is just as bad with questionable selections.

If someone legitimately has an impressive WSOP record, like Rast and Arieh, that is good qualifications.

The problem is they inducted a bunch of people who were on TV in the poker boom. Then people in Bobby's Room and other high stakes games who HOFers knew, but who weren't really crushing those games. Then there were 2 women apparently just for diversity. They also induct people still playing. Like Tomko quit playing professionally, which makes you wonder if he was really that good. Not to mention the high stakes HOFers rewarding the whale who was supporting them.

The criteria is supposed to be someone who beat the highest stakes games. Clearly Rast meets that easily.

Haha yeah, it's one of my favorite videos on Bailey's two channels, and that's really saying something. On my first viewing, I just figured it was an essay of the goofy cronyism of the Veterans Committee, and that Bailey decided to used Wallace as the poster boy. But that didn't explain the title. The twist at the end is like M. Night Shyamalan for baseball history nerds.

The loose poker equivalent to Bobby Wallace would almost be as if in 2009, someone nominated Tuff_Fish as a joke and/or a thank you for the entertainment. Then in 2025, we all learn that he's still out there, crushing Macao cash games for millions.

Or maybe the equivalent would be nominating someone like Allen Kessler or Tony Cousineau, but only to troll them for famously being min-cash specialists. Thirty years later, someone unearths all of the buy-in data from the different tourney series (similar to that online database that existed for a minute), and it turns out, Chainsaw has one of the top 20 ROIs of any tourney player in history.

And even that's not right. You need someone who didn't seem worthy based on the criteria of the era, but suddenly looks much better using modern-day metrics that no one could have predicted at the time. At quick glance, I'm thinking Crandell Addington. Three second-place Main Event finishes, but two from the winner-take-all days and all from an era when the Main had five tables at the most. His 2005 entrance in the HOF seemed to be based soley on anecdotes from Doyle and the like. But then imagine that decades from now, someone figures out a way to retroactively engineer hand history data, and it turns out Addington was an absolute red line beast.

Didn't some hockey player get elected to the ASG basically as a joke a few years ago?

As for electing whales I assume you're referring to Elezra?

It's actually amusing to me how in a game where score is kept in dollars people want to regarded as good even when they suck.

Tuff Fish crushing Macau 2025 games would be incredible!

I mean a clear problem with the poker HOF is only letting 1 person in a year when the game has grown so much.

But the other obvious problem is unlike pro sports we don't have much information to go on.
Tournaments are tracked pretty well but we really don't even know people's actual profits in the long run since buy ins aren't tracked.

And obviously there are people crushing cash games in both public and private games that just so under the radar and many of them really don't want any notoriety for obvious reasons.

For sure. Perhaps the goofiest part of the Poker Hall of Fame is that someone decided to draw up more concrete criteria in a world where much of the quantifiable info is missing or non-existent AND still allow people to nominate/vote/support their candidates based on little more than anecdotal evidence.

The opposite end of the spectrum for Hall of Fame criteria belongs to the LPGA. Granted, it's a system that almost can't transfer to many arenas outside of golf. Revised at least once in my lifetime, it's about as quantitative as you can get: a point for a win, two points for a win in a major, plus bonus points for each of the two major year-end awards. The last criterion is a bit redundant, since it's quite likely the Vare Trophy or Rolex POY winners already got there because of their tourney wins. Still, it's a good backup: theoretically, someone could finish in the top five in a dozen different events during a season but never win one. Such a person still might earn Player of the Year. And I'm sure someone has posted a sick stroke average without nabbing a win. At least they get a little something for the effort. Which is nice.

Yet as cut-and-dry the LPGA system is, you can quickly envision some flaws. Someone who goes 1st-20th-missed-33rd in four-tournament run did more for their Hall of Fame cause than someone who went 2nd-4th-12th-4th in the same stretch, yet the second person objectively had a much more impressive run. Plus, a win in 1986 is not the same as a win in 2023, etc.

To get back to the topic of the thread, it's why it would have been more appropriate for Harrah's/Caesars to launch and run a WSOP Hall of Fame. Sure, it's a weird thought that a poker-related HOF could include Chris Ferguson but not Patrik Antonius, but at least there would be few questions as to why.

Holy schnikeys... this is what I get for not being an avid hockey fan, I've never heard of this until now.
https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nh...-all-star-game

EDIT: oh, and I just noticed that the guy handing the check to John Scott is the brother of former WSOP chief Jeffrey Pollack, who was probably the guy who decided to buy the Poker Hall of Fame. Something something hashtag full circle.

Until the likes of Sklansky, Malmuth, Caro, Bobby Hoff, Scheinberg, and Savage are inducted, The Poker HoF will forever be a cocktail party joke.

and the 2-3 best 2p2 posters

Bobby Hoff should have been put in the Poker HOF many years ago.

Mason

All of those should be in there mostly for books and other nonplayer achievements. They put in TDs and such whose achievements are much more marginal.