What a few weeks it has been for the legendary Hendon Mob (HM). Barny Boatman started it all off by winning the Mobs second World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet after securing victory in Event #49: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE), shortly thereafter the Mob announced that it’s sponsorship deal with Genting had run its course and just a few day ago the Global Poker Index (GPI) announced that it had acquired The Hendon Mob Limited (UK) for an undisclosed fee.
“The idea to buy the HM came before I acquired the GPI. The guys at Epic and GPI already had a great relationship with HM and had an option to acquire the company. So I always wanted to take up that option when I had the money,” Said GPI CEO Alexandre Dreyfus.
So the number one poker-ranking database in the world now owns the number one player and tournament database in the world; or as Dreyfus puts it, ‘I now have the best product on the market both for advertising and players.’
The two domain names will continue to function as two separate entities, although the resources can obviously be combined. The acquisition now means that Dreyfus has the eyeballs of 500,000 visitors per month and 2m unique poker players per year. I can already hear the patter of tiny advertisers feet.
Beevers, Boatman…and maybe Vaswani…are helping with the handover, but once that little task is done and dusted ties will be severed. On one hand the brand name will remain forever intact, but on the other hand it does seem like the end of the enigmatic foursome that has done so much for poker, not just in the UK, but also on a global level. I’m sure we’ll still see three out of the four of them on the live poker trail, but maybe the poker writers might start referring to them as the former Hendon Mobsters?
Everyone wishes the Hendon Mob the very best, but for Dreyfus the only way is up. He is determined to be the hub for live poker players. He has a myriad of ideas on how he can create services of value for the live tournament player and this acquisition is just the beginning for Dreyfus and his team at the GPI.
