American Poker Award winners
Today we round-up some stories you may have missed, including a controversial award and Bilzerian gets his friend banned online.
American Poker Award winners
While most eyes were on the Oscars last weekend, over in Beverly Hills the stars of US poker were celebrating the third American Poker Awards. Most of the winners were no big surprise, other than Mike Sexton being nominated for three gongs and taking home none:
- Media Person of the Year - Joe Stapleton
- Industry Person of the Year - Sean McCormack
- Breakout Performance of the Year - Maurice Hawkins
- Tournament Performance of the Year - Ari Engel (Aussie Millions Main Event)
- Mid-Major Circuit of the Year - WSOP Circuit
- Event of the Year - Super High Roller Bowl
- Charitable Initiative of the Year - Dan Smith Charity Drive
- APA Lifetime Achievement Award - Mori Eskandani
- Moment of the Year - Jason Mercier goes on a heater at the WSOP
- Poker Media Content of the Year - Bob, Charlie and a life changing WSOP Main Event Journey (Lance Bradley, PocketFives)
- Twitch Streamer of the Year - Jason Somerville
- Poker Podcast of the Year - Joe Ingram
- PocketFives Legacy Awar - Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy
- The Hendon Mob Award - John Holley
- APA Jury Prize- Matt Savage
- GPI Player of the Year - David Peters
- GPI Female Player of the Year - Cate Hall
Consolation prize?
The biggest talking point from the awards came from Cate Hall winning the GPI Female Player of the Year title. This award was based on the Global Poker Index ranking system rather than a public vote.
Hall, who is currently in her first full year as a professional, criticised the award during her acceptance speech, saying:
The concept of Female Player of the Year doesn’t make a lot of sense, there were 77 men who finished ahead of me in the Player of the Year race this year and for me to get an award ahead of 76 of them – it feels to me like it has to send the message that I am not expected to compete with them.
This is my first year playing poker full time as a professional. I really think if I had been here for 5-10 years I would have been able to beat anybody in the world. Even if I never get to that point, I would rather compete and lose than be content with the consolation prize. Thank you for the consolation prize.
This caused a lot of interesting debate among a lot of notable female players on the poker Twittersphere, will Hall, Vanessa Selbst, Natasha Mercier and Jamie Kerstetter all sharing their thoughts.
Perkins and Bilzerian banned
As we reported earlier this year, we got a rare insight into Dan Bilzerian's playing ability when he played on Bill Perkin's Twitch stream. Rather foolishly for both men, he was playing on Perkin's account.
Just to prove there is not one rule for the rich and another rule for everyone else, the card room they were sharing eventually got involved this week, and banned them both live on air for shared accounting:
Do you agree with Cate Hall's view on the female GPI award? Let us know in the comments:
