The list of finalists for the 2009 Poker Hall of Fame was announced on Tuesday, September 8, after a five-week public voting process on WSOP site, and the results of the voting are loaded with the game’s biggest names. It is now up to the 15 living Hall of Fame members and the 15-member Media Panel to cast their votes before the official 2009 Poker Hall of Fame selectees are revealed during a special dinner ceremony on Saturday, November 7, at the Rio Hotel during the dinner break of the 2009 WSOP Main Event Final Table.
The nine selected candidates for the 2009 class are Barry Greenstein, Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, Tom McEvoy, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel and Mike Sexton.
Voters will be able to vote for up to three candidates and any of those who receive at least 75% yes votes will be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame, which will be part of a special Hall of Fame dinner ceremony at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.
The voters must determine which nominees most deserve an induction this year. The criteria for voting consideration is based on the following:
• A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition;
• Played for high stakes;
• Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers;
• 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.
Current Hall of Fame members also have the right to add a write-in candidate — someone they feel deserves consideration, but were not included into the list of finalists this year. Such write-in candidate will be added to the 2010 nomination list automatically. The voting members will receive their ballots this week and will have to submit their completed forms by October 2, 2009.
Before starting the 2009 WSOP, the WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack announced that the process for becoming a member of the Poker Hall of Fame would undergo a slight modification. From this year on, the Poker Hall of Fame started accepting nominations from the public.
Ten players received the required number of votes to make the nominees list. Tom Dwan, nicknamed “durrrr” online, was the only preliminary nominee dropped from the final ballot. One of the game's most exciting young players only recently burst onto the poker scene but quickly gained worldwide fame after proposing a challenge to anyone in the world (except Phil Galfond) that believed they could beat him in a four-table heads-up format on Full Tilt Poker.
Each of nine of the finalists will be invited to the special dinner held and hosted in their honor where they will give their induction speech and be awarded their commemorative trophy, and room will be reserved for additional family, friends, the current Hall of Famers and the media voting panel.
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