- This year’s European Poker Awards has no category for recognizing achievements by online players—the omission motivated Andreas “Skjervoy” Torbergsen to set up a poll on the issue.
- GPI owner Alex Dreyfus explained his reasons for the decision but was convinced by Skjervoy to reintroduce online awards for next year.
This year’s European Poker Awards has no category for recognizing achievements by online players—the omission motivated Andreas “Skjervoy” Torbergsen to set up a poll on the issue.
The awards are owned and organized by Global Poker Index (GPI) owner Alex Dreyfus, and he quickly responded to Torbergsen’s complaints.
Dreyfus put forward two reasons why online players were not being recognized. First he said that the problem with awarding prizes to online players was the lack of accuracy in knowing their results—partly arising from the different jurisdictions such as dot-com, dot-fr and so on.
Secondly, Dreyfus pointed out that it was “difficult to have a global vision of nicknames,” referring to the fact that many online players are anonymous, known only by the screen names they have chosen.
Torbergsen dismissed these problems, saying that the online tracking services provided sufficient data to identify excellent performances. He even noted the online tournament rankings produced by PocketFives, a company with whom Alex Dreyfus established an information sharing agreement in December 2013.
The debate ended with a characteristically rapid decision by Dreyfus—online player will be recognized in the awards next year.
The 2015 European Poker Awards will be celebrated at the Hilton Hotel in St. Julian’s, Malta on March 25. This year’s event is planned to replicate the glitz and glamor that Dreyfus brought to the inaugural American Poker Awards last month.
