The inaugural World Team Poker event is set to kick off on May 19th at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. The innovative competition will feature teams of professional poker players from a variety of different countries and the first fixture at the Golden Nugget will see forty top players from eight countries facing off, in a $50,000 buy-in event.
Each national team has a captain who will choose four players from the squad for each match, plus an alternate, who can be substituted in to take full advantage of team members various strengths. The official captains of the first eight teams to compete are Ben Roberts (England), Co-Captains Johnny Chan and David Chiu (China), Men “The Master” Nguyen (Vietnam), Eli Elezra (Israel), Co-Captains Jeff Lisandro and Tony Guoga (Australia), Juliano Maesano (Brazil), George Kapalas (Greece) and Phil Hellmuth (USA).
Hellmuth offered to defer his captaincy to Doyle Brunson, stating “I’m going to give him the captain jersey because he deserves it and I’ll play the number two spot”. Brunson duly accepted and the pair finalised their squad, naming Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow, Allen Cunningham, Erik Seidel, Jennifer Harman and Chris Ferguson in a very powerful line-up.
The World Team Poker is a league competition, with four league fixtures taking place per year, over a range of poker disciplines, culminating in a championship event similar to the Superbowl Finals. The competition’s organisers have attempted to make World Team Poker different from other team competitions, by introducing the idea of team tactics and substitutions, as well as securing some of the biggest names. Brenda Prackup said in a press release “After seven years of unknowns winning the WSOP Main Event, the rags to riches story has been played out. Poker needs a new story.”
The first World Team Poker event will comprise a five table shootout, featuring rounds of Pot Limit Omaha, No Limit Hold’Em and Fixed Limit Hold’Em. The last two players from each round will play in a final table. The match will be broadcast live at www.worldteampoker.com and those who register will be able to watch online, for free. It will also be filmed for television, though details are yet to be released regarding who has the broadcasting rights.
Although most of the World Team Poker rosters have yet to be finalised, some confirmed names include Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot and Ram Vaswani (England), Toto Leonidas (Phillipines), David Levi (Israel) and Kevin Song (South Korea).
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