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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

What I’ve Been Up To

Way back in August, I got a message from Hanel on Facebook asking me if I would know how to do some programming to create some data analysis tools for poker tournament results. He had been approached by Perry Friedman asking if he knew anyone who could do it, and would be interested in a job. I said absolutely and got put in touch with Perry, who put me in touch with Annie Duke. I drove down to LA for a short meeting with her to talk about what she was looking for, and was asked to come up with a proposal and estimate for the work.

Some of you may have already read about the new poker league Federated Sports + Gaming is launching. They put out a press release today. Last month at the WPBT gathering, I told some of you I was working on a poker-related job but I couldn’t really talk about it. This is it.

From the press release:

The new poker league led by Duke will be comprised of the world’s top 200 players and the events will be rake-free for poker professionals and feature generous prize pool overlays. The league will have a proprietary ranking system based on an eligibility formula that is driven by mathematics and proven historic achievement. This system will rank the top professional poker players with guidelines similar to those governing professional golf and tennis.

I am not deciding which players get invited to the league but I developed the tools they are using to do so. I can’t comment right now on the player list or requirements needed to be invited (and it’s not yet finalized, anyway), but I am pretty sure the formula used will be made public when invites are sent out.

As a side note, it’s been interesting to me to read all the speculation on where Annie Duke was headed after leaving UB, and not being able to comment on it at all due to my NDA. I’m glad they’ve finally gone public.