Becky Liggero talks to Alex Dreyfus of Global Poker Index and he shares what is the innovation behind what he is doing on Global Poker Index and how he thinks the industry can inspire more people about how amazing the game is in America.
Alexandre Dreyfus is the man behind the Global Poker Index (GPI). He’s been in an online poker industry for 10 years.
The Global Poker Index (GPI) is a leaderboard index that ranks over 300,000 live tournament poker players in the world. The GPI poker rankings are updated on a weekly basis. Players’ performances are assessed by their finishing positions in poker tournaments occurring over six periods of six months (3 years).[1]
The Global Poker Index uses data from the biggest poker database The Hendon Mob, known for collecting results of tournaments around the world and for being the reference in tournament results. They currently host results for almost 200,000 poker tournaments.
The index is used in famous newspapers along sports results to communicate about poker rankings, both on the online and print version
What is the innovation behind GPI?
“I’ve been in the industry for 10 years especially in the poker industry, mainly in Europe but a lot in the US the last three or four years. And my vision is the fact that we need poker to be bigger, we need it to be more mainstream. We need to expand the poker category. How can you expand the poker business? You need to expose it. and when you expose it, you need to promote the players and the events. So I acquire the company called Global Poker Index (GPI) which is the official ranking of poker players. We ranked 330,000 poker players everywhere in the world in 74 countries, 1400 casino. So everywhere you play in the world, you’re going to be ranked in our system. The aim of that is to try to become this poker authority, this sport franchise is gonna help poker to grow”
GPI and Phil Hellmuth
“Phil Hellmuth is of the top players in the last 10 years. He is not on the top of our ranking today because he does not play anymore. He’s 50. He has a family. The top poker players right now are the players that play.”
How to get the word out about how amazing is poker in the US?
That’s exactly what I am doing every single day. I am fighting trying to promote the fact that poker is a skill game, it’s a sport game; it’s a brain game and it’s not just gambling. And we need ambassadors like Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey. They are very different with eachother but the reality is the only way to make poker bigger is to expose it. Meaning we need media to talk about poker.”
