Secure
Secure
Trusted
Trusted
VERIFIED BADGE
Verified
Flag Background

Three New Nominees Join Repeats for Poker Hall of Fame

Written by Jennifer Newell
Last updated on
Jennifer Newell

Most of the nominees for 2021 induction to the Poker Hall of Fame have been in this position before. Seven were on the list of nominees in 2020, and some of them were repeats even then. Three new ones joined the list.

Today, the World Series of Poker announced the nominees for the 2021 Poker Hall of Fame. The plan is to vote one new person into the HOF this year, and that person will become the 60th inductee.

This process began with public nominations. The website opened on September 30 for the public to submit names of people to be considered for induction. People could submit one potential nominee per email address and choose anyone they wanted. However, in order for submissions to be considered valid, people must have met preestablished criteria of poker accomplishments or contributions to the game as a whole.

Voting closed on October 14. And today, the list became final and public.

Ten 2021 Nominees

The list of nominees is as follows:

Eli Elezra

Antonio Esfandiari

Chris Ferguson

Ted Forrest

Mike Matusow

Matt Savage

Isai Scheinberg

Layne Flack

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier

Michael Mizrachi

The first seven on the list are repeat nominations from last year. Huck Seed received the most votes last year and entered the Poker Hall of Fame. In comparison to his 76 votes, Savage was next in line with 51 votes, followed by Scheinberg with 45, Elezra with 30, and Esfandiari with 23 votes. Lon McEachern and Norman Chad – the WSOP commentating team – received 20 votes, as did Forrest. Matusow received 17 votes, Patrik Antonius 15, and Ferguson three votes. McEachern and Chad did not make the list this year, nor did Antonius.

New Nominees for 2021

Flack is one of the new nominees for 2021. He died this summer at the age of 52. Gambling 911 revealed, only recently, that the Nevada coroner ruled his death accidental. Coroner Melanie Rouse said, “We show cause of death is listed as fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine intoxication.”

Prior to his death, though, Flack was a very accomplished poker pro. He had won six WSOP gold bracelets, along numerous other wins and final tables dating back to the early 1990s. Besides earning more than $5M in live tournaments, he won money in online tournaments and played a range of cash games through the years. His career spanned low-stakes to high-stakes games, and he was respected for his proficiency in many poker variants as well as his love for the game.

Grospellier is known for many accomplishments. He first catapulted to the poker scene from his status as ElkY, a champion and very popular video gamer. His first cashes were on the European Poker Tour, including second place at the EPT Copenhagen Main Event in 2007. But he quickly solidified his skill level by making a 2007 WSOP final table and APPT Macau final table, and then by winning the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event for $2M.

From there, Grospellier played live and online around the world as a member of Team PokerStars Pro. He won numerous EPT titles before picking up a WSOP bracelet in the 2011 Seven Card Stud Championship. His second bracelet came in 2019 at WSOP Europe. He has accumulated more than $14.6M in live tournament earnings to date, putting him at the top of France’s all-time earnings list. That number doesn’t include online earnings, which may easily be in the millions. He is now a representative of King’s Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic, as well as a GGPoker Ambassador.

The other new person to the list is Mizrachi, once nicknamed “The Grinder.” He came up in the poker boom as well, recording his first tournament accomplishments in 2004, though he had been playing in Florida poker rooms for years before that.

Mizrachi’s first big win came at the 2005 World Poker Tour LA Poker Classic, where he took home more than $1.8M for winning the Main Event. He went on to earn several more WPT titles and numerous other series titles before finally winning his first WSOP gold in 2010 by taking down the Players Championship 8-Game for the Chip Reese trophy and more than $1.5M. His second WSOP gold came in WSOP Europe in 2011, followed by an unprecedented second Players Championship win at the WSOP in 2012 for another $1.45M and a third in the same event in 2018 for $1.2M. He won a fifth WSOP bracelet in 2019.

In total, Mizrachi shows more than $17.2M in live tournament earnings to date.

And the Winner Is…

We will know this information on November 17.

Right now, the 32 living members of the Poker Hall of Fame will begin voting from the list of nominees. They will do so based on the following criteria:

-Player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition.

-Player must have competed for high stakes.

-Player must be at least 40 years old at the time of nomination.

-Player must have played consistently well over time, gaining the respect of peers.

-Player must have stood the test of time.

Non-players can be nominated. The criteria for them are that they must have contributed to the overall growth and success of poker with indelible positive and lasting results.

The public will find out the 2021 nominee on November 17 at the start of Event 79 at the World Series of Poker. That tournament is the Poker Hall of Fame Bounty event, in which many living HOF members will play as bounties. The new inductee will play as a bounty, thus outing himself as the nominee. That person will then attend a ceremony in conjunction with the final table of the WSOP Main Event at the Rio in Las Vegas to officially receive the honor.

 

search

Featured Blogs