Eric Danis is the president of the Global Poker Index and The Hendon Mob. The organizations maintain the most important rankings in live poker, and are the most used consultation website for players, as they have the largest database of live poker winnings.
Yesterday we released our comprehensive 2023 Live Poker Year in Review, which relied heavily on the aforementioned two sites’ statistics. Notably, Eric was very kind to offer us his personal assistance with compiling the information needed to put our article together. As a follow-up piece, then, we invite you to have a look at the conversation we had with the GPI/Hendon Mob president about last year’s rankings, his day-to-day work, the traffic his websites receive, and poker media in general.
Interview with Eric Danis
The last weeks of December and the first of January are where you usually have the most work. Is it the time of year you enjoy the most, despite the hard work?
To be honest, the timing sucks! The final few weeks of December and the first few weeks of January is usually a calmer time for most, but one of the busiest for us with GPI PoY going into Awards voting. It really creates a lot of stress at home. I’ve been very lucky to have an amazing wife and fantastic kids who cut me some slack. It’s very fulfilling career-wise, but the timing does indeed suck.
Do most venues usually send in their results or are you still having problems getting results? Do you get a lot of requests from players to add more poker tournaments to your database?
Most venues are fantastic. In an ideal world, we’d be getting results sent in by everyone, in an ideal format where there would be minimal work to turn-around to get those results entered in our database. That said, we totally understand what venues go through. Most are short-staffed, and asking them to spend their already busy time on results doesn’t work for everyone. However, the players demand it, and the players are their clients. I always say, the players are the reason we all get to work in this industry: without players, we’re all out of jobs.
Eric with the GPI and THM team during the Global Poker Awards.
One of the rankings you have is the Flag Hunter. How did the idea of creating this ranking come about?
I don’t remember the exact story, but I remember Remko Rinkema and I talking to Dominik Nitsche, because he was the first player to ever tell me personally that he was playing in different countries in order to collect more flags. Thus the Flag Hunter leaderboard was created. It’s so fun to see the players post when they collect a new flag. We have plans for the future to make flag hunting even more prominent on The Hendon Mob.
Which do you think are the most difficult flags 🏳️ to get?
Regrettably, my brain can’t put a finger on the most difficult flag to capture at this time (I’m getting old and, well, it’s already been a long few weeks 😃), but there are certainly quite a few flags that are hard to capture year in/year out!
Bin Weng dominated the live circuit in 2023 with 55 cashes and 6 titles. Do you think this was one of the most dominant performances for a PoY?
It’s certainly one of the most impressive performances we’ve seen. To win the GPI PoY takes all kinds of sacrifice, and we tip our caps to Bin on an incredible season.
We saw your Tweet where you mentioned that the website had 38M visits, which was a record. What does that number mean to you?
It’s recognition from the poker community that they trust us, and that our work doesn’t go unnoticed. It’s always great to share amazing news! We thank each and every person that visits The Hendon Mob. I always remind the team that we’re in the entertainment business, and if we can get someone to come to our site and enjoy themselves, forgetting whatever’s happening in the outside world, then we’ve done our job!
Records are meant to be broken and I’m proud to announce that @TheHendonMob not only broke records in 2023 – we destroyed them!
We finished the year with 38.5M page views … 38 MILLION!!!!!!!
— Eric Danis (@EricDanisPoker) January 2, 2024
Do you think the media and poker journalists should have more recognition in the industry? Daniel Negreanu proposed that a member of the industry enter the Poker Hall of Fame every so often. What do you think of that idea?
I believe we do a good job at recognizing media and poker journalists at the Global Poker Awards, with a minimum of three media trophies being handed out. But yes, media members and journalists are extremely important in any industry. I’d absolutely support a new path to induction into the Poker Hall of Fame recognizing journalists and media members!
Thanks Eric for answering our questions and congratulations to your team for doing a great job with the GPI and THM.
Cover Photo courtesy of Frank Op De Woerd
