While many may credit entrepreneur Alexandre Dreyfus with the “team poker” idea (and be mistaken), it seems that he doesn’t hold the copyright on the concept. In India, a new team poker league is ready to debut and, focusing on one of the largest nations in the world, has an excellent chance at success – depending on how the nation embraces it.
Last week, India’s Poker Sports League began with its first live qualifiers, with the end goal of filling out the rosters of 12 teams with nine players each. Unlike Dreyfus’ Global Poker League, the PSL teams are all owned by Indian businessmen and, according to the creator of the PSL Amit Burman, the licenses for those teams was in great demand. “We sold out 12 teams within four days,” Burman commented during early live action in Delhi. “I don’t know how many other leagues can boast of this.”
Part of the draw of the league, Burman stated, is that generations of families gather together to play cards, regardless of age. “We are the only country where we grow up playing cards with our parents,” he boldly stated. “It’s high time that this skill game gets a professional touch.” Live qualifiers have already begun in such cities as Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta, and future qualifiers are scheduled for Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, and Goa.
With the PSL, the twelve teams that will take part – the Bengaluru Jokers, the Chennai Bulls, the Delhi Panthers, the Goan Nuts, the Gujarat Acers, the Haryana Hunters, the Hyderabad Kings, the Kolkata Royals, the Mumbai Anchors, the Pune Sharks, the Punjab Bluffers, and the Rajasthan Tilters – will each field a squad of nine players. Consisting of a captain/mentor, two pros, two live qualifying players, two online qualifying players and two wild cards, the teams will play for a total prize pool that is 3.36 crore. That breaks down to roughly $500,000 U. S. up for grabs between the teams.
India seems to be a hotbed of poker activity of late. Along with Burman’s PSL, there is another tour that is looking to do something similar but online. Jatin Banga founded the Online Poker League in partnership with GOPOKER, creating an eight-team league that started at virtually the same time as the PSL. Claiming “the largest prize pool that online poker in India has ever seen,” The OPL’s eight teams – the Bombay Badshahs, the Bangalore Billionaires, the Hyderabad Highrollers, the Delhi Dons, the Goa Gamechangers, the Kolkata Kings, the Chennai Cartels, and the Manipal Money Makers – will feature play over eight weeks all online.
It also seems that Banga has been reading someone else’s playbook. “We intend to sportify the game of poker and bring it to the masses,” Banga stated in a press release. “We have been working on this for a while now and the concept has materialized into something beyond what we had imagined. The never seen before structures and massive prize pool will keep the adrenaline rush going for the players along with a chance to make some serious money!”
While it might be easy to just discredit either of these efforts – and neither has any television broadcasting or has talked about online options – there is one area that they have an extreme advantage: potential fans. With an estimated population of 1.3 billion, it would take a much smaller segment of the country (say 5-10%) to make the endeavor successful. As such, this might explain the creation of the two tours, with the other differentiating feature of one being online and the other being a live endeavor.
It is also interesting that these two leagues actually embrace something that Dreyfus’ GPL has been trying to avoid, the fact that poker is played in casinos and its gambling nature. Dreyfus has often commented on how he wanted to avoid “gambling related” names for his teams (the Las Vegas Moneymakers are named for former World Champion Chris Moneymaker; the New York Rounders are attributed to the seminal poker film Rounders and the San Francisco Rush could be attributed to the bustle of a major city) to be able to appeal to a larger, more mainstream audience, but it seems the Indian teams aren’t hesitating to bring it up. The PSL live qualifiers are also going to be held in casinos, something that the GPL didn’t do with the creation of its own arena in Las Vegas.
As these two leagues get off the ground, there has been little to no information on what the second year of the Global Poker League is going to look like. Dreyfus has been occupied with the creation of a Chinese version of the GPL (GPL China), complete with its own 12 team league for its roughly 1.4 billion residents, but he has said that information is “coming.” It is obvious that there is an appetite for the team poker concept, but which one will reign supreme?
