Poker Hall of Fame Honors Layne Flack Posthumously

Last updated on July 15th, 2022

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The World Series of Poker announced this year’s inductee into the Poker Hall of Fame. That person is Layne Flack. The posthumous honor comes nearly one year after Flack’s untimely death.

HOF Announcement

Last year, the World Series of Poker established a new tradition for announcing Hall of Fame inductees. They first introduced a new tournament, the Poker Hall of Fame Bounty tournament, a bracelet event that starts after the Main Event. The buy-in is $1,979, representing the year that the HOF launched. And the bounties are placed on the heads of each living member of the HOF that plays the tournament, individual bounties set to represent the year that the person was inducted.

The first year of this new tradition in 2021 involved Eli Elezra. He was the 2021 inductee, and there was a brief ceremony to honor Elezra prior to the start of the WSOP event.

This year took a turn because the sole inductee, Layne Flack, died last year.

Legends of the game played the @WSOP Hall of Fame Bounty today, to celebrate all inductees who could and couldn't be with us, including the newest member, Layne Flack.#WSOP pic.twitter.com/HqmW9cZvAX
— Alec Rome (@RomeForReal) July 11, 2022

Nominees Narrowed to One

The living members of the Hall of Fame were tasked with voting for the inductee.

The WSOP opened voting earlier this summer to offer the public the opportunity to nominate the person or people they felt best deserving of spots in the Hall of Fame. When that voting process closed, the WSOP released this list of nominees:

-Josh Arieh: player, new nominee
-Layne Flack: player, second year of nomination
-Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier: player, second year of nomination
-Kathy Liebert: player, new nominee
-Mike Matusow: player, eighth year of nomination
-Lon McEachern & Norman Chad: contributors, second year of nomination
-Michael Mizrachi: player, second year of nomination
-Brian Rast: player, new nominee
-Matt Savage: contributor, seventh year of nomination
-Isai Scheinberg: contributor, third year of nomination

The 32 HOF members had ten votes each to designate to nominees as they saw fit. When the WSOP tabulated those votes, they found that Flack had the most.

Despite the overwhelming qualifications of nominees like Matt Savage and Isai Scheinberg, not to mention the numerous years of nominations, they must wait another year. The WSOP has decided that only one person (or team) will be inducted each year.

Need to add more than one per year. Only adding one is creating an artifact”backlog” of deserving people who will either never get in, or be added posthumously
— Ben (@_VegasBabyYeah) July 11, 2022