You guys have been given two months to nominate your favorite poker pros and to vote for them, and now the points have been tallied and Harrah’s Officials have revealed the list of the pros who managed to get into the Top Ten. The council will then sift through this list and see who are eligible to join the Poker Hall of Fame.

The Mechanics

In the world of poker, the fans are given ample opportunity to participate actively in the most important events, such as choosing who gets to go into the Poker Hall of Fame and who doesn’t. A few months ago, nominations for the top names in the industry began on the WSOP site. The fans were asked to list down their nominee and to cite the reason for their choice. Now that step’s over and done with, and so is the tallying of all the votes. All that’s left is to judge which pros are eligible of making it into the Hall of Fame. There are four criteria that need to be fulfilled in order to make the cut. First, the player should be acknowledged by his peers, next he must have played for high stakes, next he must play consistently well, and finally, he must have stood the test of time. For those who aren’t players, they should have positive and lasting contributions to the poker industry.

They will be judged by the existing members of the HoF and also by selected members of the media. To be included, they must earn fifty percent of the votes of these judges. Last year, the threshold was an almost impossible 75%, so Mike Sexton was the only one who was able to make the cut.

The Top Ten

The nominations this year were interesting, to say the least. There were only 102 “valid unique names” that were considered, and 44 of them had multiple votes. The top ten of them include Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman, Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, Linda Johnson, Tom McEvoy, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, and Erik Seidel. As you’ve probably noticed, a lot of these pros are still very young, so it’s unknown whether or not they’ll be considered. Tom Dwan made it into last year’s list but he was too young and was therefore disqualified. But the list in itself is pretty impressive because the pros are truly of high caliber. If they don’t make the cut this year, they’re likely to make it at one point or another anyway.