My Hall Of Fame Vote Debated: Conclusions About This Year’s Hall Of Fame Vote

The ballots have been cast, so the debating is done. As mentioned earlier, my votes can’t be revealed, so this isn’t a column about that. What we’re about to do with this space is take a look at how the candidacies fared from my perspective, along with a couple of bonus notes on the end that might interest the invested, since the process isn’t as cut and dried as it might seem.

The candidates:

Chris Bjorin: I wrote that Bjorin would probably lose some potential votes to Thor Hansen and probably wasn’t much of a consideration this year, which is why I was surprised to hear a number of American voters throwing some pretty serious support behind him. There’s a growing feeling right now that the Hall of Fame is too US-heavy. I personally don’t believe that’s the case because we’re still dealing with candidates from a period where poker was more advanced state-side, but I see legitimacy in the argument and those who are sympathetic to it felt Bjorin was their man this time around. I don’t expect he’ll get in, but he’ll likely be in the top half of the vote.

David Chiu: I’m a big fan of David’s on a personal level, which is why it was disappointing for me that I heard very little support for his candidacies in the voting discussions I had with interested fans and other voters. One voter opined that the ambassadorial perspective of Chiu was flawed, and that it was actually just his agent grabbing a Chinese flag because of the potential opportunity that affiliation could create for Chiu. For me, I feel like he still had to make the decision to carry it.

Eric Drache: My guess is that Drache will be in the top half of the field. People recognize his contributions, but his is a legacy candidacy that was fighting an uphill battle against another legacy candidacy.

Thor Hansen: I heard very little in the way of support for Thor, a little surprising. At the same time, I didn’t speak much with European voters, some of whom I expect will have voted for him.

George Hardie: In the wake of my dismissal of him, I didn’t hear a single complaint (and I heard complaints on other things I wrote). I think his presence on the ballot represents a real flaw in the system, and it cost us for more legitimate candidates like Huck Seed, Jack McClelland and David Sklansky.

Jennifer Harman-Traniello: My guess is that Jennifer is going to finish borderline top 5. There was some support for her amongst fans, but little amongst the voters I spoke to, who seemed to feel that JHT is a shoe-in to get in eventually, but only after the field thins a little more.

John Juanda: It’s interesting, the feeling I got from my discussions is that there’s no doubt he’s the best player of the lot and that there’s very little chance he’ll get in, but not because of Howard Lederer’s comments. Most are taking Howard’s interviews with a football-sized grain of salt, but the feeling is that Juanda should wait. Why? I’m not entirely sure, he’s got the numbers to be in now. The only thing I can think of is that it might be nice for him to be enshrined in tandem with one of Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu, who’ll be coming up for election soon.

Tom McEvoy: Tom’s name was seldom mentioned in my discussions. Ultimately, I think people view him as a player first and that, in comparison to other player candidates, he just didn’t bring the same game. I think this is going to be a long, hard, deflating process for McEvoy; I hope he’ll tune it out and be content with the good his efforts have done.

Scotty Nguyen: There are two camps on Scotty. Those who haven’t forgiven him for maybe the worst individual behavioural performance in televised poker history and those who have, and the latter in large part voted for Scotty. If I were betting on the two candidates I see getting in this year, he’d be one…

Sailor Roberts: …and Sailor Roberts would be the other. Early in the process, Doyle Brunson took to Twitter and announced Sailor was getting all ten of Doyle’s voting points, and I’m guessing others followed suit, at least in part. Sailor’s absence from the 2011 ballot loaned some urgency to a vote for him this year.

The Roberts entry is a nice segue into our bonus section, because it’s important to note how so many voters (myself included) will metagame their votes. Knowing that Doyle’s vote going as it was, a number of those I spoke with said they would be giving Roberts at least a portion of their votes because this seemed to be the year, while others said they felt it so obvious that he was getting in that they’d opted to use their votes elsewhere (that they’d then split their votes confused me…it strikes me as more sensible to throw ten votes behind the candidate you’d most like to see join Roberts in this year’s class).

I think it’s pretty safe to say that you’ll see a large majority of votes cast for six of these entrants, because voting for the four who no one else is voting for is essentially wasting a vote. No one is voting for people who they don’t see as viable candidates for the hall; rather, they’re voting in a way that they believe will make their vote count for this year. Some of you might have a problem with this, but it’s an inevitable part of a small-sized democratic process.

Thanks for reading the series. I’ve enjoyed writing it.

You can Find Gary’s series of  articles “Debating My Hall Of Fame Vote” in three parts:

Part 1: The Ambassadors

Part 2: The Sharks

Part 3: The Pioneers