The Global Poker Index Expands Coverage with Revised Ranking Formula The Global Poker Index Expands Coverage with Revised Ranking Formula
Tom Brown, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License
Key Takeaways
  • The GPI’s rankings will be expanded to cover over 160,000 players.
  • One major change is that all events which meet the GPI standards will now be eligible for points.

The Global Poker Index (GPI) has announced changes to the formula it uses to rank live tournament players. The biggest impact of the changes will be to expand GPI’s rankings to cover over 160,000 players.

One major change is that all events which meet the GPI standards will now be eligible for points. Even though many events will only qualify for a small amount of points, it will allow players who earn them to have their results displayed in the GPI database. The other main changes are:

  • Field Size Cap reduced from 2,800 to 2,700. The field size cap compensates for the effect of very large tournament fields—the same number of points are awarded to similar tournaments that breach the cap. A $10k event with 3,000 entries will distribute the same number of points as a $10k event with 5,000 entries.
  • Buyin Cap reduced. Similarly, the impact of High Roller events will be reduced by awarding the same points to all events with a buyin above $20k—previously $25k. The GPI formula uses a logarithmic scale that recognizes success in higher buyin tournaments indicates more skill than success in low buyin events.
  • Fifth Result added to Period 3. The GPI uses an “aging factor” to measure a player’s success over time. The modification will give a bit more weight to recent results. Results are calculated over 6 periods. Periods 1,2 and 3 will now all count a player’s five best results, while periods 4,5 and 6 will count the four best cashes.

The GPI formula was originally developed by Annie Duke and Eric Faulkner, who used statistician Don Schlesinger as a consultant. The aim was to create a ranking system that was more accurate than existing models and that reflected recent performance rather than historical success.

Since then, the GPI was acquired by Zokay Entertainment, which then bought the Hendon Mob which acquires the tournament data used. GPI recently established a data sharing agreement with PocketFives which means that both live and online results are now accessible for all ranked players.