On Sunday night, the World Series of Poker announced the late Layne Flack as the 61st member of the Poker Hall of Fame.
Flack, who passed away in July of last year at the age of 52, beat out nine other nominees including players Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, Brian Rast, Josh Arieh, Kathy Liebert, Michael Mizrachi, Mike Matusow, as well as PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg, WPT Director Matt Savage, and WSOP commentating duo Lon McEachern and Norman Chad.
The six-time WSOP bracelet winner burst onto the scene in the late 1990’s and was a household name throughout the poker boom in the early 2000’s, generally regarded as one of the best players of his era. The South Dakota native worked at small card clubs in Montana before he made his way to Las Vegas to play professionally.
He won his first WSOP bracelet in the 1999 $3,000 pot-limit hold’em for $224,400 and earned his nickname “Back-to-Back Flack” for winning two tournaments in as many days at the Legends of Poker series in Los Angeles just two months after that.
He went on to win two bracelets at consecutive WSOP’s in 2002 and 2003 to add to the history of his nickname. He won a pair of no-limit hold’em events in 2002 for a combined $571,900 before coming back the next year and taking down the $1,500 no-limit hold’em shootout for $120,000 and the $2,500 Omaha hi-lo for $119,260. He won his sixth and final bracelet in 2008 in the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha for a career-best score of $577,725
Over the course of his more than two-decade career, Flack racked up more than $5 million in live tournament earnings while simultaneously becoming one of the most well-liked players on the tournament circuit.
At the time, Flack believed that politics involving the voting members had played a role in why he hadn’t been nominated yet. He was ultimately nominated for the first time in 2021, losing to Eli Elezra.
The announcement came during a special Hall of Fame event at Bally’s and Paris Las Vegas featuring a $1,979 buy-in in honor of the year the hall was founded. If players were able to eliminate a member, they would also earn an additional bounty equal to the year the player was inducted.
In order to be considered for the Poker Hall of Fame, a player must be a minimum of 40 years old and must have played high-stakes poker “against acknowledged top competition” while “standing the test of time” by playing consistently well and earning the respect of their peers. Or, for non-players, they must have “contributed to the overall growth of the game with indelible positive and lasting results.”
There are 32 living members of the hall, which collectively vote each year from the list of nominees.
