The brand-new American Poker Awards will debut on February 27, 2015, in Los Angeles as part of the Global Poker Conference.
“Poker is show business,” said GPI CEO Alex Dreyfus in a PokerListings interview earlier this year.
“We need exposure and we need storytelling”
Poker, he carried on at the London Poker Summit, is also an individual sport and it should be treated as such.
There will be several events in the coming year organized by the Global Poker Index to help realize this plan.
European Poker Awards Return in the New Year
The European Poker Awards will be held for the 14th time in March, 2015. In its inaugural edition in 2001, there were only five categories.
Marcel Luske was elected player of the year – he is also the only player who managed to win the title twice - while a young Alex Kravchenko was honoured as Rookie of the Year.
This year there will be 14 categories in total.
While most of the awards will be determined by a panel of experts from the poker industry, the three “best players” will be determined by the GPI ranking lists, and one category will be entirely decided by public vote: poker ambassador of the year.
In the categories decided by the experts, the panel will collect names and votes between mid-December and Mid-January.
After that, a shortlist of four nominees per category will be published. The final results will be published on the day of the event.
The composition of members of the panel is not exactly classified, but the names will still not be made public to prevent any influence on the members.
The European Poker Awards will take place March 26, 2015 at the Hilton Hotel in St. Julian’s, Malta.
More Efforts to "Sportify" Poker are Incoming
The Global Poker Conference is the GPI’s next step in its ongoing efforts to “Sportify Poker.” The idea is to integrate poker as an individual sport and give it the media presence that other sports receive.
This October, the GPI invited representatives of EPT and WPT as well as media outlets to take part in the first poker summit in London, where the “Sportify” concept was presented.
During the Conference in Malta, which coincides with the European Poker Awards, industry leaders, media, players and operators are going to analyze the state and discuss the future of the poker ecosystem.
You can find the complete list of award categories and more information on the Global Poker Conferences on the homepages of the American Poker Awards and the European Poker Awards.
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