Home / Poker News August 2012 / The Poker Grapevine – Dan Smith Extends GPI Lead
The Poker Grapevine – Dan Smith Extends GPI Lead
Posted by: Jo Martin - Thu, 2012-08-30 15:29
Sitting at the top of the GPI Player of the Year Ranking is no small accomplishment and even those who manage to reach first place have a truly tough time hanging on to the top spot. Dan Smith, the current leader, has been sitting in first for more than a week now and instead of being reeled in by the opposition, he’s in fact extending his lead. This week, he turned in yet another great performance by finishing deep in various EPT Barcelona events. To begin with, he won the EPT Barcelona’s €50k Super High Roller which he followed up with a third place finish in the €10k heads-up event. Such a positively hot run is indeed quite difficult to top, which is why Smith’s top spot can indeed be considered a fully deserved one for this week and possibly event the next.
The points-difference currently separating the top 2 in the ranking has thus grown to 77 points. Marvin Rettenmaier is second with 802.42 points. Changes in the ranking only occurred from 3rd place down. Jonathan Duhamel is now 3rd, having overtaken David Baker who now fell to 4th. Andrew Lichtenberger is 5th having climbed 4 positions, followed by PokerStars’ Daniel Negreanu in 6th. Eric Cajelais, Kyle Julius and Phil Ivey all dropped a couple of positions.
Tommy Vedes is the one wrapping up the top 10.
In other news: even as the
online poker industry is experiencing continuous traffic drops, 888 Holdings PLC has made public a report, according to which the operation has registered record revenues during the first half of 2012. Interestingly enough, according to the records, responsible for the biggest revenue-spike was the online poker product of the company.
888 Poker has apparently seen a 72% growth compared to the same period of 2011.
According to Brian Mattingly, 888 Holdings CEO, the growth is due to the improvements of the poker product which has thus far performed extremely well in newly regulated markets like Spain.
