Allen Kessler’s Wikipedia snub leads to larger debate

The 2+2 forums were abuzz after it was announced that 2+2’er and one of the site’s favorite whipping boys, Allen Kessler had been rebuffed by Wikipedia, which told the poker pro he wasn’t “newsworthy” enough to be included in the popular online encyclopedia. This of course led to the great debate of whether or not Allen Kessler deserves a Wikipedia page, but it also led to the larger debate over which poker players actually deserve to be included in Wikipedia, and how many overrate their actual celebrity.

Personally I’m pretty ambivalent to Kessler and his antics when it comes to complaining about tournament structures, comps, and any other potential freebie that might come his way –Kessler is the poker world’s Yelp, steering people to and from different tournaments and casinos with overanalyzed and detailed minutiae that mean very little to 99% of people—and I wouldn’t be concerned one way or the other if he did gain entry into Wikipedia. What did get me thinking was the role poker, and professional poker players, have on the average person, and whether or not poker celebrity in any way translates into real celebrity.

Aside from maybe a dozen or so players, there are very few recognizable poker players out there – think someone that your mother could recognize—Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Mike Sexton, and Doyle Brunson come to mind, but even players like Erik Seidel, Sam Trickett, Tom Dwan, and other true superstars in the game are likely leading fairly anonymous lives when they want to.

So basically my feeling on the matter is that when it comes to celebrity, there are only a distinct few poker players who make that difficult cut –let’s face it Time Magazine isn’t reporting on Tom Dwan’s prop bets—but when it comes to poker celebrity there are probably a couple hundred players that would be immediately recognizable to the average poker fan.

I’m not sure precisely what metrics Wikipedia users use to determine how famous someone is, and whether or not they deserve a spot in the Wikipedia database, but I’m sure many of the users are not poker players, and don’t understand that results are not the only factor in determining a person’s overall poker popularity. Some people can simply be famous for their personalities in the poker world (see Sam Grizzle).

Is Allen Kessler one of these people? It’s actually kind of hard to say, since Kessler is extremely famous in poker’s inner circle, but not so much to the casual WSOP viewer who doesn’t read PokerNews or follow 2+2. To me it really doesn’t matter, and the simplest way to solve this problem would be for someone to create a Poker Wiki, where virtually anyone in the poker world could gain entry –this would also make my life as a poker journalist 10-times easier if there was a place to go to find birthdays, major accomplishments, and other tidbits on thousands of different poker players.