2024 Poker Hall of Fame nominee: Antonius

While the nominees are voted on by the players in the Hall, the nomination process is public and simply occurs by vote on the WSOP website. I think there are some worthy candidates who are being left off the nomination list. I will start by saying I don't know who just turned 40 in the last year and wasn't eligible previously. Maybe there is someone in this group who deserves to be nominated. But out of people who WERE eligible last year, while I was on the nomination list, I have one question:

Why isn't Patrik Antonius being nominated?

This is the criteria:

Played for high stakes.
A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition.
Be a minimum of 40 years old at time of nomination.
Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers.
Stood the test of time.

Patrik is 43 years old, born in December 1980.

Patrik has played high stakes forever, and won. As of 2020, according to High Stakes DB, two Patrick accounts won approximately 17 million dollars (Patrik Antonius & FinddaGrind), putting him just behind Phil Ivey on FTP as #2.

Patrik also played on other sites where he very likely won. And my understanding is back in the day he was one of the biggest overall winners online. Patrik has played big live games for a very long time as well. He's been playing in Bobby's Room in the big mix game for a long time. Patrik has played against the best poker players in the world for over 20 years. And he's still here competing quietly today.

He's played the highest stakes, won, had the respect of his peers, and has stood the test of time. He crushes the criteria.

The only thing that historically Patrik didn't really have was tournament results. He's changing that today though as he consistently plays the Triton events and other high rollers in Europe, and has added over $10M in the last 3 years 2022-2024, with $23M in total earnings now. My understanding is he doesn't really play tournaments in the USA bc of tax reasons, which is why you don't see him playing WSOP tournaments. But he's played plenty outside the US.

He's basically done everything in poker. He's won a lot online. Won live. He plays all the games: big bet, limit. Won a bunch in cash games. Won in tournaments. He's been around playing nosebleed poker as long as anyone 43 years old or younger.

For him to not even make the nomination list is criminal frankly and in my view the biggest omission.

And I'm not saying this because Patrik is a good friend of mine. We are cordial and have chatted here and there, but he's an acquaintance, that's it. I'm writing this because I think he clearly deserves to be nominated and voted on by the rest of us in the Hall this year, and he wasn't nominated the last two years I was on the list.

The point of this post isn't for me to compare Patrik to people who were nominated last year. There are a bunch of worthy candidates on that list.

The point of this post is to get people to nominate Patrik so he's on the list this year. I'll end by saying that the second person that I would nominate (who hasn't been nominated) after Patrik is Steve O'Dwyer. I'm not as familiar with Steve's career. I'm not sure if he's played a lot of cash, and if so what his results are. I also don't know his online tournaments results. What I do know is Steve has crushed live tournaments for a very long time, and is still doing so today. He's 8th on the all-time money list and has been playing the biggest live tournaments for well over 10 years. Steve just turned 42 and was eligible last year, and wasn't on the list either. He should be on the list as well.

So when they open up the process, go to https://www.wsop.com/pokerhalloffame/ & you know what to do.