We’ve heard about it. We have been promised the glory of “sportified” poker for some time now. And now it’s here. Well, no it’s not actually here yet, but it’s almost here! And the Global Poker League has even given us some more information about what’s on tap in the form of the official team names and their managers.
The Global Poker League is expected to be split into two conferences. The Americas Conference will include the teams from New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, Montreal, and San Francisco. The Eurasia Conference will be composed of Berlin, Moscow, Paris, London, Hong Kong, and Rome (Barcelona was on the GPL’s original list, but has been replaced by Rome).
Chris Moneymaker, winner of the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event and human catalyst of the poker boom, was announced as a the manager of the Las Vegas team last week, a team called the “Moneymakers.” That is an extremely convenient coincidence, a team sharing a name with its manager. The complete list of team names and managers:
Berlin Bears: Philipp Gruissem
Hong Kong Dragons: 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
Aside from the managers (who are also team members), the remainder of the team rosters have yet to be determined. That will happen via a live draft on February 25th SLS Hotel Beverly Hills. The draft process actually starts on January 18th, when the top 1,000 players in the Global Poker Index will be invited to enter their names in the draft. A number of players who know they will receive invites have already said they will put their names in, including Chris Moorman, Fedor Holz, Darren Elias, and Anthony Zinno.
Then, on February 18th, the draft order will be determined. Each of the three rounds will be randomly sorted in order to avoid giving any team the advantage of selecting at the beginning of each round. And, as mentioned, the draft will take place a week later.
If I might also give a word of advice to the GPL: people know what draft rounds are. On the GPL’s website, the concept of the first, second, and third rounds is actually explained. “Based on the pre-announced choosing order – each of the GPL’s 12 Team managers will choose their first player,” the site reads. “Since this is the first round – manager’s [sic] choices represent their ‘top’ picks – the players they’d most like to have on their teams.”
Yes, GPL, we get it. The players chosen first are the most desired. It goes on to explain that second round picks represent “2nd tier” picks, etc. Maybe the person writing the text was getting paid by the word.
A fifth player for each team will be selected by the managers in the week after the draft. This “Wild Card” represents a “fourth tier” player, one who the manager still very much wants, but was not deemed important enough to select in the first, second, or third rounds of the draft.
