Betfair’s stable of young gun poker pros recently became a little bigger. The independent site announced that it has signed Peter “Zupp” Jepsen to Team Betfair, joining Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad, Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi, and John “Kunku wap” Tabatabai. Jepsen is an acclaimed Danish poker pro who took down the 2007 European Poker Tour (EPT) Polish Open.
His EPT win was worth $423,000. He defeated French poker player Farid Meraghni heads-up. Many will point to the tournament as a defining moment in Team PokerStars Pro member Katja Thater’s career. The German pro banked $83,000 for fifth place, her best EPT finish. In 2006, Jepsen scored $165,000 for finishing third in the Caribbean Poker Classic in St. Kitts, a tournament that was ultimately won by Fredrik Haugen. A Betfair spokesperson told Poker News Daily, “We’re delighted to have Peter join the Betfair Poker team. He has all of the skills to be successful online and in offline tournaments as well. We look forward to working with Peter over the next two years and maximizing his and our profile.”
On signing with the online poker site, Jepsen commented in a press release, “I am looking forward to starting my sponsorship with Betfair Poker. They have been really welcoming and I already feel [like I’m] part of the team. It’s given me new impetus to go out and get a big win under my belt.” Jepsen joins a star-studded group in Team Betfair, which is headlined by Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad, who burst onto the live poker scene in 2007 by winning the inaugural World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe Main Event for $2 million. Other accolades on Obrestad’s tournament resume include a win in a 180-man multi-table tournament on PokerStars without looking at her cards (allegedly, she looked once when she was in a tough spot).
A $20,000 guaranteed tournament that takes place on March 22nd on Betfair is dubbed “New Breed” and pits site members against Obrestad, Mizzi, Tabatabai, and Jepsen. The tournament has an affordable $22 buy-in and an estimated $5,000 will be paid out to its winner. From March 27th through 29th, the online poker room will host a major live tournament in Estoril, Portugal, which is located just outside of Lisbon. The Main Event boasts a €550 buy-in and gives players 15,000 starting chips. Blind levels will last for one hour. On March 18th, the site is running a €210 buy-in satellite to the Portuguese tournament, with at least three packages valued at $2,000 each up for grabs. Qualifiers begin at $2.20.
Mizzi, a Canadian, chopped the Irish Poker Open in 2007 and finished second in a £5,000 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha tournament held during the 2008 WSOP Europe festivities. That tournament marked the first bracelet win by Theo Jorgensen, who recently defeated Full Tilt Poker pro Gus Hansen in a live boxing match in Copenhagen. Mizzi won a $3,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament as part of the 2008 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio and recently finished 16th in the Aussie Millions Main Event for $46,000. Online, he won the PokerStars $100 rebuy ten days ago for $34,000 and has two Full Tilt Online Poker Series tournament victories to his credit (one under “Imper1um” and one as “kristy_sea”).
Tabatabai is a former winner of an All Africa poker tournament held in Swaziland for $127,000. He also took first in an AUD $5,000 buy-in Heads-Up event held during the Aussie Millions for AUD $71,000 last month. That tournament saw the Team Betfair pro triumph over Alec Torelli heads-up.
According to traffic site PokerScout.com, Betfair boasts the 16th largest site by cash game player volume with a seven-day running average of 560. Its 24 hour peak is 1,154, or double its average. At the time of writing, which is 10:00pm in London, a total of 1,075 cash game players are battling it out on the site’s virtual felts. Betfair does not accept players from the United States.