In June, Hollywood Poker, the long-standing member of the Ongame Network, abruptly closed its doors. No explanation was given at the time, but fortunately customers were not left holding the bag, as their account balances were transferred from the 8-year old site to RedKings.com. It now appears that Hollywood Poker is back, but has gone under an extreme transformation. The new version is not your father’s Hollywood Poker.
The site is now owned by a company called PLAOR, a social games company. The new incarnation of Hollywood Poker is a free-to-play site accessible on Facebook which will live up to its name as players will have the opportunity to sit down at the virtual tables with celebrities every day. The site will also be a vehicle to raise money for the celebrities’ favorite charities.
Colleen Taylor of TechCrunch.com recently interviewed PLAOR (pronounced “player”) CEO Mark Caldwell to discuss the Hollywood Poker re-launch. He said that after PLAOR bought the assets of the “old” Hollywood Poker, it shut down the real money site and refunded its players (not exactly, but transferring the accounts to another poker room is close enough for this discussion). “Now we’re moving into social entertainment where we want to help connect users to celebrities by using poker and tournaments and other ways to drive revenue for charities,” he said.
Caldwell said that there are already over 160 celebrities signed up including James Woods, who had been with Hollywood Poker since it opened in 2004, Dennis Quaid, and Kevin Pollak, who placed 134th in the World Series of Poker Main Event this year and will serve as the site’s celebrity ambassador. Other celebrities shown on Hollywood Poker’s home page include Kelly Hu, Scott Baio, and Peter Facinelli.
Caldwell readily admitted that with so many celebrities, there will be some with whom not everyone will be familiar. This was by design. “Everybody cares differently about ‘their’ celebrity, whoever that celebrity is, so we need more than just the ‘A-listers,’ if you know what I mean,” he told TechCrunch.
“Passion” was the key word when Caldwell discussed what he and his team were trying to accomplish with the new poker room. “We want to connect with celebrities and find out things that they’re passionate about and then create games that they’re passionate about and other users will be passionate about, too.”
In a separate interview, Kevin Pollak, who is perhaps best known for his role as Todd Hockney in the film The Usual Suspects, talked about one thing that attracted him to Hollywood Poker besides the actual poker. In comparing the site to Twitter, which also gives people the opportunity to interact with celebrities, Pollak said:
I’ve had tremendous fun with Twitter over the last several years and sort of noticed that Twitter doesn’t give a tremendous amount of credit to the fact that it was launched and continues to succeed as a billion dollar company on the back of celebrities.
I’m trying to help them [Hollywood Poker] also make that huge connection in the real-time communication between fans and so-called celebrities, as well as having the potential of being the largest distribution route for charitable funds on Facebook.
Having just launched, traffic at Hollywood Poker is still extremely low, with approximately 8,000 users, according to Facebook. Early joiners will receive access to the VIP Club during the Beta phase, which will provide access to discounts and chip purchases and special items that can be displayed at the table.