Gus Hansen will be the man all the amateurs want to beat as Full Tilt Poker (FTP) return to our television sets with the soon to be released ‘Full Tilt Poker Pro Battle; and Chris Moneymaker tells PokerListings that he thinks PokerStars will sell their sister company.
If there was one thing that FTP were good at, it was producing television poker shows. The poker news used to be awash with praise for shows such as Poker After Dark and Face the Ace, in addition to the 2009 & 2010 sponsorship of the iconic British shows Late Night Poker and Poker Million.
Black Friday changed all that, and televised poker shows became as rare as Ram Vaswani appearing at a poker table, yet all that is about to change as FTP throw on their glad rags and prepare to make a triumphant return with ‘Full Tilt Poker Battle,’ a David v Goliath television show planned to filmed in Kiev, Ukraine.
The tournament will be open to players emanating from the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltic Region, and it will see online qualifiers battling to get through to a single table tournament, where they will play against a roster of top pros from FTP and PokerStars, on a televised set for a top prize of $35,000.
The ‘Season’ winner will get a shot at a heads-up match against the Full Tilt figurehead Gus Hansen for the chance to win $100,000.
“We love finding more ways to bring poker to the masses,” Sarne Lightman, FTP’s Head of Marketing stated, “and the Full Tilt Poker Pro Battle does just that.
There is space for 12 online qualifiers in total and $109 direct qualifiers will run each Sunday from Oct 13 through Nov 16th. Satellites for those events will be running weekly. There is also a seat up for grabs for anyone fortunate to get through the freeroller program, and qualification is already underway for that one culminating in a Grand Final to be held Nov 16th.
Players lined up to appear on the show are PokerStars Team Pros Alexander Kravchenko, Ivan Demidov, Maxim Lykov and Eugene Katchalov.
Moneymaker Believes FTP Will Be Sold
During an interview with PokerListings, during the European Poker Tour (EPT) London festivities, Chris Moneymaker was quoted as saying, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Full Tilt is sold off eventually,” before continuing. “Personally, I think that buying Full Tilt was an ingenious move. PokerStars gets lucky in spots, but they also make pretty good decisions.”
If FTP were to be sold, who could be a potential buyer? Moneymaker puts his money on an established land-based casino.
“It would rather be a brick-and-mortar casino like Caesars. Any big, affluent casino that can afford to pay $950 million or whatever it’ll cost.” Said Moneymaker.
The poker boomster also talked about his relationship with his coach Calvin Anderson and how it feels to be able to play on Full Tilt Poker after so many years being told that he couldn’t as per his PokerStars contract.
You can catch the full interview right here.
