On February 6th, the crew from Victory Poker celebrated the launch of the new Everleaf/UPN network site at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas. Now, one week after the festivities and two weeks after its debut, Victory Poker appears to be chugging along.
The diverse team of pros at Victory Poker includes Andrew “good2cu” Robl, who finished third in a $5,000 Limit/No Limit Hold’em event during the 2008 World Series of Poker (WSOP) for $144,000, outlasting everyone except for poker superstars Erick Lindgren and Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo in the 332-player field. Robl told Poker News Daily how Victory Poker has been faring in its first few days in operation: “The launch went really well and there was a lot of buzz and hype in the poker community. Overall, people’s reactions have been positive and the website has been getting a lot of traffic.”
Officials from the USA-facing room told Poker News Daily that Victory Poker’s website has been seeing 1,500 visitors per day. According to the traffic ranking site PokerScout.com, the Everleaf/UPN family of sites has seen its traffic grow steadily since the end of January. On February 1st, a peak of 623 real money ring game players took to the network’s felts. Now, that number sits at 698 and is growing steadily. Robl added that the traffic figures were “better than we expected.”
Winning a date with Sara Underwood is one of the promotional opportunities on the horizon for Victory Poker users. Underwood, the 2007 Playboy Playmate of the Year, is a sponsored pro of Victory Poker and finished fourth in a charity poker tournament held during the site’s kickoff party in Sin City. Other promotions that allow customers to interact with Victory Poker pros in a live setting will follow.
Some in the industry questioned why Victory Poker would join the relatively small Everleaf/UPN network rather than a larger USA-facing entity like the Cake Poker Network. Robl explained, “A lot of sites have become so big and so corporate that there’s no real feeling of a community. Our pros will be playing on the site and even playing small stakes. You can come on Victory Poker and play $0.50/$1 with Antonio Esfandiari. That’s pretty cool.”
Other Victory Poker pros include former DoylesRoom Brunson 10 member Alec “traheho” Torelli, former Full Tilt Poker pros Paul Wasicka and Lee Markholt, Chinese Poker guru Danny Wong, “Flying Bilzerian Brother” Dan Bilzerian, and online poker pro Brian “tsarrast” Rast. Despite the strong group, Robl commented that the site will expand its roster of pros: “We definitely want to get more pros involved – maybe some foreign players – but we’re going to be very selective. We only want elite players. We don’t want to be like PokerStars or Full Tilt and have 200 pros.”
Despite being in business for less than half a month, Victory Poker has already had a considerable amount of exposure in the live arena. Wasicka recently took down the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Circuit Championship in Tunica, earning $139,000. He defeated Larry Gurner heads-up in a final table that also included Lock Poker’s Matt “All In At 420” Stout, Carter “BdyBldngpkrplyr” Phillips, and Dwyte Pilgrim. Wasicka earned his first gold ring as a result, but gained fame in the poker world for finishing as the runner-up to Jamie Gold in the 2006 WSOP Main Event for $6.1 million. Wasicka donned a Victory Poker patch in Tunica, giving the nascent room some much-needed face time.
Robl is passionate about Victory Poker succeeding. He explained that the team at Victory Poker is dedicated to seeing the site flourish: “We all want Victory Poker to do really well. We really believe in our vision for the company and we’re all going to work very hard to bring Victory Poker into the top five or 10 poker sites.”
Other Everleaf/UPN network sites include flagship room Everleaf Poker, Minted Poker, and Poker4Ever.
