FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#874 – Mike Sexton, the Poker Hall of Fame, and History

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Congratulations to Mike Sexton on the announcement of his induction to into the Poker Hall of Fame. Sexton is a worthy choice to become the thirty eighth member of the Hall of Fame. He was one of the top performers in the “early days” of tournament poker (late 1980s and early 1990s), he has a World Series bracelet, he has won the Tournament of Champions, and he has cashed a zillion times in the World Series going back to time immemorial.

His greater fame, however, came outside Harrah’s/WSOP events. Prior to Full Tilts, he was (along with Phil Hellmuth at Ultimate Bet) one of the first big-name pros to embrace online poker. He became an early and easily identifiable spokesperson for Party Poker. In addition, he (with Vince Van Patten) became the face and voice of the World Poker Tour. Sexton’s commentary, expressions, nicknames, and Midwestern twang became ubiquitous during the boom years of 2003-2006. Mike has also used his success to donate generously to a number of causes and promote still more.

I find several things interesting about today’s announcement – and mostly troubling. I am in favor of Sexton’s induction and VERY in favor of the institution of the Poker Hall of Fame. But I think poker, the Hall of Fame, and its members would be much better served by a better induction process and by an actual hall.

My central thesis is that part of poker’s popularity depends on developing, quantifying, and standardizing its history and accomplishments. We all agree that good TV poker encourages people to play. When the game on TV means something to the viewers, they are more likely to tune in and keep watching. For instance, don’t you think ESPN would have a great broadcast if it was on hand and recording Phil Ivey’s first World Series bracelet (PLO in 2000)? The final table included Chris Bjorin, Ali Sarkeshik, Dave “El Blondie” Colclough, Markus Golser, and Phil Hellmuth. Then he beat Amarillo Silm heads-up for the bracelet – the first time Slim ever made it to heads-up at the World Series and lost.

That final table had it all: international stars, recognized all-time greats, the young superstar, the clash of generations, the changing of the guard. The reason we can conjure all those images out of a bunch of guys playing poker in a run-down casino in the middle of the night almost a decade ago is because of our sense of, and appreciation for, poker history.

Other sports are tremendously enriched by the built-in marketing potential of their history. Everybody agrees that, when fans argue over which teams or players are (or were) better, that fuels excitement for those sports. The same potential is there for poker but it is largely untapped.

Does the Poker Hall of Fame significantly add that element to poker? Does it have a legitimate selection process? Why just one or two people a year? Why just one person this year? Why Mike Sexton and not Erik Seidel or Barry Greenstein or two of them or all three of them? Why not Ted Forrest? Why not Phil Ivey? Why not Tom McEvoy? Does it really mean anything to be in the Poker Hall of Fame? Have its members accomplished more than anyone that is not a member? Finally, does the Hall of Fame contribute to our understanding or appreciation of people like Tom Abdo (1982), Joe Bernstein (1983), Bill Boyd (1981), Sarge Ferris (1989), Blondie Forbes (1980), Henry Green (1986), Murph Harrold (1984), Red Hodges (1985), Corky McCorquodale (1979), Roger Moore (1997), Julius Oral “Little Man” Popwell (1996), Red Winn (1979), and Sid Wyman (1979)?

Granted, Harrah’s has inherited a hall of fame that has had a haphazard and inconsistent history. The Hall of Fame was a great idea hatched by Eric Drache and Jack Binion in 1979. I think Eric developed, on his own, the four criteria that still (with one addition) are supposed to govern Hall of Fame qualifications. But then they just started picking people.

The first five inductees included a few who met none of the criteria, like Wild Bill Hickok, and Edmond Hoyle. The former is known in poker for dying, famously, during a poker game. The later had nothing to do with poker and pre-dated its introduction but was the first to publish standardized rules for card games. Of the five charter members, only Johnny Moss was still making noise at the table. That remained the case for the members chosen in 1981-1986.

But all hell broke loose when they picked Puggy Pearson in 1987. He wasn’t dead or a million years old, and he had contemporaries with equal qualifications (or better). Jack Strauss was one of those players and because he had just died, was a natural choice for 1988. Doyle Brunson, the best of that whole group (if not of all-time) was also inducted that year. That started the precedent for inducting someone who just died (Jack Keller in 1993) or who was at the top of the heap at selection time (Chip Reese in 1991, Jonny Chan in 2002).

This has been further complicated by using the Hall of Fame to honor somebody still around but under-appreciated in their time. This would include members like Crandell Addington (2005), Barbara Enright (2007), Roger Moore (1997), and Dewey Tomko (2008).

This process, involving at various times Eric Drache, different members of the Binion family, different employees of Harrah’s, and whoever did the picking this year, has led to an eclectic but not well understood and inconsistent group.

I also recognize that Harrah’s has to deal with the fact that poker is not like other “sports” or activities that have their own hall of fame. Poker doesn’t have a “season”. Its public face is known primarily through tournaments, which are an artificial and recent addition to the game, and at best only partially representative of poker excellence. Even for tournament poker, is almost impossible to quantify success. Old records are spotty or non-existent. Competition has changed over the years. Even now, some very basic information about individual players – like tournaments entered in total buy-ins – is not collected.

Despite these handicaps, Harrah’s CAN try to make things better. It wasn’t until the 1930s that baseball had a Most Valuable Player Award. It didn’t have an award for pitching excellence (Cy Young Award) until the 1950s. “Saves” were not recorded until the 1960s. More than fifty years after the end of the Negro Leagues, historians are still collecting statistics for those players. In basketball, the careers of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, and Jerry West were over before they started keeping statistics on rebounds and steals.

In all those sports, they overcame a lack of standardized records by doing the best they could. In some instances, they started keeping new statistics. In others, they collected old statistics from the best information available. And with the Negro Leagues, such standardization may never exist, but with each effort to improve the historical record, we find new stars and new appreciation for accomplishments long-forgotten.

I admit to a potential conflict of interest here. I have informally proposed, on several occasions, to undertake for Harrah’s development of some of these historical projects. I have also offered to help them develop a virtual (online) hall of fame as well as a traveling hall of fame exhibit. But I’m not criticizing them so I can get another job. These are good ideas and important things for Harrah’s if it wants to build poker’s long-term growth.

James McManus’s book on the history of poker, COWBOYS FULL, is about to be released by FSG. I have seen an advanced copy and it is phenomenal. A great work of both scholarship and art, McManus provides great foundational information about where poker came from, its importance in history, and the founding of what we now consider its most important events and institutions. I hope Harrah’s (which is the most logical choice but by no means not the only choice) takes COWBOYS FULL and the great marketing opportunity developed by moving the Main Event to November and starts building on that history. If they do this, the institutions and events they are trying to establish will develop greater meaning and permanence. When that happens, we all win.

Ironically, the choice of Mike Sexton for 2009 can be the springboard. To some degree, over the past several years, different groups have been competing for pre-eminence in poker. When the World Poker Tour was new and hot, the Horseshoe was going out of business and it looked like the WPT could transform itself into the “real” championship of poker. Harrah’s has been late coming to the game but is now fully engaged in making the World Series an enduring institution. The WPT’s troubles have marginalized it to some degree. The Bellagio has a heritage going back, arguably, to the Golden Nugget and Eric Drache and the 1970s. But with different owners and an affiliation with the WPT, it is difficult to figure out their place as the arbiter of what’s important in poker. Likewise, there has been the largely invisible schism between live and online poker. Online poker has fueled the success of the World Series but its uncertain legal status has driven its influence underground.

Mike Sexton represents all these disparate and sometimes warring factions coming together. He is a famous World Series competitor, but was also a star on other tournament circuits. He was a leading spokesman for one of the naughty online poker sites. He was the voice of the competing tournament circuit, the World Poker Tour. If the cooperate embodiment of the World Series – Harrah’s – can honor a legendary name from the WPT and online poker, it should be capable of incorporating all these elements into a better recognition, understanding, and standardization, of poker’s history.

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