The Philippines-licensed online gambling company, Natural8, has hired Kitty Kuo, Xuan Liu, and Dong Kim to represent the brand around the world where they will be known as Team Hot.
The opportunity to represent an online poker room in a sponsored capacity seems to be on the rise, and the Philippines-licensed online poker room Natural8 is the latest to follow the trend.
The online gambling company has hired Kitty Kuo, Xuan Liu and Dong Kim to represent the brand both online and at live tournaments throughout the world with extra emphasis placed on the Asia-Pacific market. From now on you can call the three of them Team Hot.
The choices are sound.
Both Xuan Liu and Kitty Kuo are members of the Global Poker League (GPL) with Kuo a part of the San Francisco Rush franchise, and Liu a member of the Montreal Nationals. The GPL has big plans to expand into the Chinese region and so you can do the math.
Liu has 17.3k Twitter followers and is also a regular streamer on Twitch with over 2,000 people eyeballing her every check-raise. The Canadian resident is currently streaming a $100 – $10,000 bankroll challenge to promote her partnership with Natural8. Liu was once a member of 888Poker.
Kuo has over 6.8k Twitter followers and is very active on social media. She is currently ranked #3 in the Global Poker Index (GPI) Female Rankings. Celina Lin, apart Kuo and Liu are the two most talented and popular female Asian poker players in the world.
Kim is a different kettle of fish entirely. You are not going to find him posting photographs of his pet frog on any social media channel. It will be interesting to see how he adapts as a face of a company. Kim was one of the four players chosen to take on the AI Claudico in the Man v Machine challenge that including Doug Polk, and he is a past Spring Championships of Online Poker (SCOOP) $20,000 buy-in Heads-Up Champion.
Natural8 has also taken a line from PokerStars by appointing the Chinese pro and commentator, Xiao Chung, as a ‘friend of Natural8.’ I wonder if that makes him a part of ‘Team Not So Hot’ – population him?
Either way, Chung will wear the Natural8 patch during the World Poker Tour’s visit to Sanya for WPT National China. Natural8 is running satellites to the event that will take place at the MGM Grand, Sanya Oct 28 – Nov 3.
