- The PokerStars blog has posted the results of a social media analysis of top professional poker players—not just their own—but top players by any measure.
- PokerStars has assessed players on the basis of their performance on Twitter and Facebook using measures developed by FollowerWonk and Likealyser.
- Unsurprisingly, both because he is the GPI Player of the Decade, and the top PokerStars Team Pro, Daniel Negreanu comes out with the top score.
Phil Hellmuth has said that the Global Poker Index (GPI) measure is unfair to celebrity poker professionals who want a social life away from work. PokerStars has listened and has set a goal for pros to aim for that takes into consideration their desire to be social.
The PokerStars blog has posted the results of its social media analysis of top professional poker players—not just their own—but top players by any measure.
PokerStars has assessed players partly on the basis of their performance on Twitter and Facebook using measures developed by FollowerWonk and Likealyzer.
To this they have added a simple measure of how many social media channels the players use and then derived a PokerStars Social Score to rank the players.
Top Performers
Unsurprisingly, both because he is the GPI Player of the Decade, and the top PokerStars Team Pro, Daniel Negreanu comes out with the top score.
He is followed in second place by Phil Ivey who leads all other players ranked in both Twitter followers and Facebook Likes.
Coming in third—perhaps unexpectedly—is PokerStars Team Pro Liv Boeree. While her number of followers and likes are nowhere near those of Negreanu and Ivey, and she lacks an active YouTube account, her FollowerWonk and Likealyser ratings are strong enough to boost her into the top three.
If PokerStars had considered the up-and-coming social media platform Vine—one of Boeree’s favorite creative outlets—she may have ranked even higher.
Rounding Out the Top 10
Another surprise in the rankings is the position of Phil Hellmuth. While making it into the top 10, the poker brat trails the likes of 2005 WSOP Main Event Champ Joe Hachem, PokerStars Team Pro Jason Mercier, Ultimate Poker ambassador Antonio Esfandiari, 2010 WSOP Main Event Champ Jonathan Duhamel, Everest Poker ambassador Sam Trickett, and PokerStars Team Pro Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier.
Hellmuth’s lack of a strong social media score is directly related to his less than stellar Likealyser rating which measures “the potential and effectiveness” of Facebook pages according to the company web site.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the score of poker community outcast Joe Sebok. Coming in at #14, the son of famed poker player Barry Greenstein still holds his own when it comes to social media.
Having built up a strong Twitter following when the social media platform was just getting started, Sebock was able to parlay his social popularity into a spot on the sponsored pro roster of the now defunct Ultimate Bet—a poker room best known for cheating its players out of millions of dollars.
You can check out the entire rankings on the PokerStars Blog.
