By: Queen of Hearts Paris
For someone like me, having sat through 40-plus years of NFL drafts anxiously waiting to see who my favorite team (the NY Giants) drafted, it was particularly enjoyable to watch poker enter what many are calling the next new wave of televised poker. (See my last post here.)
The Global Poker League completed their first-ever Draft yesterday, with each of the 12 Team Managers choosing four players (from the pool of 203 draft-eligible players) for their team. No, it didn’t engender quite the same amount of hype as the NFL draft does, but the League did a heck of a good job for its inaugural season. They live streamed on Twitch.tv, had four guest analysts (including The Brat Hellmuth and Kid Poker Negreanu) and each team was put “on the clock” just as they are in the NFL (albeit for only three minutes) with lots of speculation and analysis surrounding each manager’s pick. For poker enthusiasts, it was a taste of the excitement and potential of the team competitions to come.
Team Managers chose in the order that had been determined by lottery last week, which meant that the Rome Emperors had the first round draft pick. The team with the 12th pick, the Hong Kong Stars, however, also had the 13th – the second round went in reverse order to try to be as fair as possible to all teams. The team managers will also add two “wildcard” players in the coming week, although in many cases they will count themselves as one of the wildcards.
Max Pescatori, Manager of the Rome Emperors, made Mustafa Kanit the GPL’s first draft pick , which was pretty much of a no-brainer since Kanit is a fellow Italian and ranks among the top 10 on the GPI.
The following are the 12 teams as they are now constituted after the draft:
Rome Emperors: Manager Max Pescatori
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Montreal Nationals: Manager Marc-Andre Ladouceur
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New York Rounders: Manager Bryn Kenney
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San Francisco Rush: Manager Faraz Jaka
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Las Vegas Moneymakers: Manager Chris Moneymaker
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Sao Paulo Metropolitans: Manager Andre Akkari
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London Royals: Manager Liv Boeree
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Moscow Wolverines: Manager Anatoly Filatov
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Los Angeles Sunset: Manager Maria Ho
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Berlin Bears: Manager Philipp Gruissem
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Paris Aviators: Manager Fabrice Soulier
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Hong Kong Stars: Manager Celina Lin
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Handicappers are already looking at the New York Rounders and the London Royals as pulling off the strongest teams. But as we all know, in poker anything can happen, and in team poker who knows? The Texas Poker Store Blog will continue to keep you totally up-to-date about the Global Poker League; in fact, as of now I am considering it my special beat so come back soon!