The Poker Hall of Fame Nominations – 2012

The World Series Of Poker has just released all of the nomination processes for this year’s Poker Hall Of Fame. Each year the hall inducts one or two new players, with last year’s new members being Linda Johnson and Barry Greenstein.

We are going to look at a few of the nominees we feel should be considered. The short list is so large, but we felt we would throw in a few personal choices.

Jennifer Harman- Traniello?

Without doubt she is the best all round woman player ever to feature in poker, she has about $2.6 million in career earnings and to date has two World Series of Poker Bracelets which really speaks for itself.

John Juanda?

With over $12 million in career earnings enough bracelets for five arms, 6 WPT final tables and coming in at 8th in the all time top earnings list, he should be one of the top nominees.

Though, he doesn’t seem to be fancied, mainly because of his quiet approach. Many other players will be put ahead of him due to their off-table image. In my view this is wrong, a player should be rewarded on merit regarding poker, not on how many times they provide interviews.

Chris Moneymaker?

Chris Moneymaker has been mentioned a lot this year, and not really for what he has personally achieved. Since he famously won that 2003 WSOP, there has not really been much else to rave about, however the effect that win had on poker, with giving many other likeminded internet qualifiers the aspirations to do exactly as he did.

Being inducted is never purely on poker as we mentioned above with Juanda, it is also about what they have done with regards to the growing popularity of the game. So in that sense, why should he be inducted? It would be fair to say that a portion of the success of poker over the last 10 years was down to his performance in 2003.

In fact, when he won that year, poker registered its largest ever influx of new player, especially online. There are so many players that are grinding today that only took up the game after reading the Moneymaker story. It was the ultimate rags to riches storyline that gave all of us that belief that it could perhaps happen to us.

Of course, to cast your votes you literally just have to visit the World Series Of Poker website, though it is recommended that you think very carefully before making your vote. There are so many viable winners, and you have to put everything into perspective when making that vote…it’s not just success that counts.