Five Thoughts: Molly’s Elba Makes Poker Cool Again, The GPI’s Flawed Formula, and the Fan Event of the Summer

Watching a year-old YouTube rerun of Joey Ingram’s Poker Life Podcast with European Poker Tour commentator Joe Stapleton this week, I came across an interesting perspective on where poker’s next boom might come from.

According to Stapleton, a knowledgeable poker industry veteran and without a doubt the funniest commentator in the game, poker’s original boom in the early 2000s was derived from two things: Chris Moneymaker’s historic and rather unbelievable 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event win, and the popularity of the 1998 movie Rounders.

According to “Stapes,” and many others for that matter, Moneymaker made the whole world believe they could win, and Matt Damon and Edward Norton made poker look so cool in Rounders, everybody wanted to.

Stapleton went on to say that if poker is going to see another boom in popularity, something needs to be done to make the game cool again.

1. Upping Poker’s Cool Factor

The effort to make poker cool again got a major shot in the arm this week with the announcement that British actor Idris Elba will join fellow A-lister Jessica Chastain to star in the Molly Bloom biopic Molly’s Game.

Bloom rose to fame in 2014 after penning a book about hosting high-stakes Hollywood home games and the film is said to be based on her memoir.

Elba, who starred in the HBO series The Wire and the British crime drama Luther, is one of the hottest actors in Hollywood these days, and about as cool as it gets.

The film, currently in pre-production, is also set to be the directorial debut of Aaron Sorkin, known for his writing on TV series like The West Wing and successful films like The Social Network and Moneyball.

The idea of a sequel to Rounders has been bandied about for quite sometime, but if the poker world needs something to kick off it’s next boom now, Molly’s Game may be it, because the cool factor for this cast and crew is simply off the charts.

Related: More Details Released for “Molly’s Game”: Elba and Chastain to Star2. The Formula for Success

PokerNews Editor-in-Chief Donnie Peters got it right this week in an Op-Ed piece claiming Steve O’Dwyer was robbed of Season 12 European Poker Tour Player of the Year honors by a flawed formula.

Despite having more wins, more final tables, and winning more money than Mike “Timex” McDonald, O’Dwyer had to settle for second place, with McDonald earning the bragging rights that come with the Player of the Year title.

Of course, the EPT uses the Global Poker Index’s scoring system to determine its POY, and unfortunately, the system’s buy-in caps left the award up for debate this time around.

The GPI also powers the WSOP POY, where the winner of the biggest event in poker history and at least one multiple bracelet winner were pretty much out of the running in 2015, thanks to a formula the GPI either can’t or won’t explain.

I think it’s time the GPI realize there is more to being poker’s …

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