Reflecting the growing importance of the game, the process for selecting the 2009 Poker Hall of Fame inductees has gotten a lot more formal and sophisticated this year, putting it in a class with other major sports.

It began with public input at the World Series of Poker website. This yielded ten preliminary nominees that the Hall of Fame’s Governing Council will be studying and debating. The council will then present a formal list of nominees to a panel of 15 poker media members and the 15 living Hall of Fame members, who will have the final say over who joins the exclusive club this year. The formal induction will be during the November Nine competition.

The candidates range from battle-scarred old pros to very young guns. The old guard is represented by Mike Sexton, Tom McEvoy and Dan Harrington. Then you have top players in their primes – Barry Greenstein, Men Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel and Phil Ivey. Tom Dwan, certainly right now the most well known of the fierce new Internet competitors, is also on the list.

The criteria for election are important: A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition, played for high stakes, played consistently well and gained the respect of peers, and stood the test of time. Non-players must have contributed to the overall growth and success of the game, with indelible positive and lasting results.

Only 37 members have been inducted during the Hall’s first 30 years, so it is indeed a great honor, and being on the selection committee is a task I take very seriously, because a Hall of Fame must represent the best of the best. To me, a Hall of Fame honor is the culmination of a player’s career, almost a lifetime achievement award, and the most important criterion is not just that someone has played with and beaten the best, but that he or she has done it over a long period of time. Just as a no-hitter or World Series championship does not get you in the baseball Hall, dominating the poker world for a few years will not get you in either.

The poker world is full of stories of players who ran hot and then lost it all. But poker is a long-term game. To get in the poker Hall, or at least to get my vote, a player will have to play and beat the best for a long, long time. And it will also help if the player has something else to bring to the table too, such as books in the cases of Tom McEvoy and Dan Harrington, or promoting the game, as with Mike Sexton.

While everyone on this list is a world-class player, many just have not been around long enough to be considered for the Hall yet. They’ve proven that they are world class, now they have to prove that they can stay that way.