|
Party Poker Returns to Television |
PartyPoker.com has just announced its return to European telvision in the form of the broadcast of their Premier Poker League event which will take place in February of this year. The event will be filmed in 3 Mills Studio in London from February 10-16th and be broadcasted in the UK on Channel 4 near the end of March.
Premier League Poker has a bit of a different format from most other poker broadcasts. Each player will buy into the league for $60,000. At the end of a series of play, the top 4 players will progress into a heads up bracket, where they will compete for the final two seats. Party Poker is adding in on the prize pool to make it a total of $1 million, which is a double up from last year's pool.
The field is a pretty daunting one. There are 12 total players, nine of which are repeats from last year's broadcast, including Phil Hellmuth, Dave 'The Devilfish' Ulliott, Tony G, Andy Black, Ian Fraser, Roland De Wolfe, Vicky Coren, Juha Helppi and Eddy Scharf. New to the table will be Marcel Luske, Annie Duke and Russia's Alexander Kravchenko. A pretty strange and unpredictable bunch, with several new faces to break the format of the usual roster of U.S. faces that have come to dominate most every major tournament broadcast.
Said a representative from Party Poker: "Premier League Poker was an outstanding success last year with both players and viewers. Devilfish's recent form makes him the favourite to win, a status that he is bound to embrace much to the annoyance of Hellmuth and Tony G."
Another fine rep stated: "We are delighted to announce the line up for Premier League Poker II. This is one of the strongest line up's assembled in poker and with the buy in increased to US$60,000, coupled with vast international TV distribution, Premier League Poker is now established as the world's leading televised poker event."
Hopefully this trend will indicate a shifting gear in the stage of televised poker, a launch off from the often predictable seeming roster we've come to see every couple minutes on TV. If poker on TV is to remain as popular as it is, they've got to keep us on our toes, and as usual, the Europeans are stretching ahead in the race for something new.
February 5, 2008 |
