The Somuchpoker Poker Index (SPI): How It Works

Chaar-Lee discovered poker over 20 years ago, starting with fixed-limit games before embracing the rise of No-Limit Hold’em across cash games, STTs, and MTTs. In the early days, he and his circle sometimes played more than 40 different formats in a single night. He organized the first poker camp in his region and has contributed poker technology to several televised shows. Today, he supports the SOMUCHPOKER team from the tech side, blending two decades of poker passion with technical expertise.

Updated: 2025.12.04

The Philosophy Behind the SPI

The Somuchpoker Poker Index (SPI) is designed to answer one simple question: Who is the best tournament player right now?

Traditional rankings often suffer from two extremes: they are either dominated by High Rollers (where money buys points) or by sheer volume in small events. The SPI bridges this gap. Our modern algorithm creates a fair playing field by balancing the financial prestige of an event with the difficulty of beating a large field.

Whether you crush a massive 2,000-player event in Manila or take down an elite High Roller in Jeju, the SPI rewards excellence accurately.

The Annual Race: Asia-Pacific Focus

The SPI is strictly an annual leaderboard. Every year on January 1st, the points reset to zero, creating a fresh race to crown the Player of the Year.

This ensures that the rankings reflect current form rather than past glory. While poker is a global game, the SPI is specifically fine-tuned to monitor and celebrate success within the Asia-Pacific region, giving a true picture of who rules the Asian poker scene in any given calendar year.

How We Calculate the Points

The SPI formula relies on three core pillars to determine the value of a tournament, which we call the Event Index.

1. The Buy-in Factor ($B)

The Financial Weight

We believe that playing for higher stakes requires skill, but the points shouldn’t scale linearly with money. To prevent the rankings from being “bought” by playing only super-high-stakes events, we use a Cube Root formula.

This means a tournament with a $100,000 buy-in is prestigious, but it doesn’t award 100x more points than a $1,000 event. It significantly “dampens” the advantage of pure money.

Buy-In Factor

(Where Average Buy-in = PrizePool / Entries)

2. The Entry Factor ($E)

The Field Difficulty

Beating 50 players is hard. Beating 2,500 players is statistically much harder. The SPI heavily rewards players who can navigate through massive fields. We use a Square Root calculation for the number of entries, which is the industry standard for recognizing the “survival skill” needed in large tournaments.

Entry Factor

3. The Event Index ($EI)

The Tournament’s Max Value

By combining the financial prestige ($B) and the field difficulty ($E), we get the Event Index. This number represents the total points awarded to the winner of the tournament.

Event Index

Your Score: The Position Factor

Once the value of the tournament ($EI) is established, your specific score depends on where you finish.

Crucial Rule: You only receive SPI points if you finish In The Money (ITM).

The points are distributed using an inverse square root curve. This ensures that the difference between 1st and 2nd place is significant (reflecting the difficulty of closing out a win), while the difference between 50th and 51st is marginal.

The Final Formula:

SPI Score

A Real-World Example

Let’s look at a major event like an APT Main Event:

Prize Pool: $3,700,000
Entries: 2,547

Buy-in Factor: The formula yields a factor of 113.25
Entry Factor: The root of the field size is 50.47
Event Index: $113.25 \times 50.47 =$ 5,715 points (This is what the Winner gets).

Player Results: