Long awaited by poker fans since ideas man, Alex Dreyfus of Global Poker Index, came up with the concept to launch a Global Poker League to sportify poker, we finally have some more details on what the GPL will entail.
There will be four teams from the US and one each from the UK, Canada, Germany, Russia, France, Italy, Hong Kong and Brazil.
Team managers, several of which are sponsored by online poker giant PokerStars, include Chris Moneymaker who will head up the Las Vegas Moneymakers, Liv Boeree leading the London Royals and Maria Ho in charge of the Los Angeles Sunset.
The complete list of franchises and managers is as follows:
Berlin Bears —Philipp Gruissem
Hong Kong Stars —Celina Lin
Los Angeles Sunset —Maria Ho
Las Vegas Moneymakers —Chris Moneymaker
London Royals —Liv Boeree
Montreal Nationals —Marc-Andre Ladouceur
Moscow Wolverines —Anatoly Filatov
New York Rounders —Bryn Kenney
Paris Aviators —Fabrice Soulier
Rome Emperors —Max Pescatori
San Francisco Rush —Faraz Jaka
Sao Paulo Metropolitans —Andre Akkari
Each manager has a commitment to the league for a minimum of two years, and team selection will begin on February 25 during the GPI American Poker Awards. The draft will be and livestreamed on Twitch.tv and hosted by Kara Scott, presenter for the World Series of Poker with analysis provided by Phil Hellmuth.
“Today is an exciting day in Global Poker League history, the confirmation of our team managers is a crucial step towards our goal. We’ve secured an incredible amount of talented leaders to represent our 12 franchise teams as well as strong intent from some of the world’s best poker players to make themselves draftable on 25th February,” commented Dreyfus. “We’re looking forward to what the next few months and the inaugural season of the Global Poker League will bring for fans across the globe.”
In order to be eligable, players must be ranked in the top 1000 of the Global Poker Index. A number of high profile players have already said that they plan to take part, including rising star Fedor Holz, three-time WPT Champion and WSOP gold bracelet winner Anthony Zinno and Chris Moorman who in the all-time leader in online poker tournament winnings with more than $10 million.
Matches will take place live and online with the playoffs and championship matches taking place at a North American sporting venue inside The Cube, which allows the audience to see in, but the players cannot see out.
The GPL Regular Season will start in April and ends mi-September (with a break for the World Series of Poker), followed by GPL Playoffs and the GPL World Championships.
The Global Poker League is now one step closer to marrying the communities of video games, sports and poker on a global scale.
