Negreanu Promotes Poker Olympics Idea

Apparently, the Winter Olypmics have gotten Daniel Negreanu thinking as he came up with the idea of a Poker Olympics with the participation of six countries.

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While a lot of countries with little to no snow throughout the year are represented at the Winter Olypmics, the games are obviously most popular with states where winter sports are second nature to most. Canadian poker pro Daniel Negreanu is accordingly enthusiastic about them and they have even given him the idea of a Poker Olympics.

“In the spirit of the Olympics, here is a poker tourney idea that I think would be both fun and interesting,” he tweeted, sharing a structure where participants from six countries could participate for $50,000 each, accumulating a total prize pool of $1,800,000. In the first three days of the festival, two heats would be played each day with starting stacks of 100,000 and one player from each team in each heat.

On the fourth day, a finale could be held: here, each team would have the stacks accumulated in the previous heats by its players. On the first six blind levels, players would be free to decide which to play but all players would have to play one. After that, a new player must play every level.

“This would be so much fun and the final table would be extremely skillful and deep,” Negreanu added, also sharing his idea of the participants, or at least a selection of them:

USA: Smith, Mercier, Selbst, Seidel, Raghavan, Volpe, Kenney
Canada: Negreanu, McDonald, Mizzi, Duhamel, Watson
Germany: Shemion, Rettenmaier, Gruissem
United Kingdom: Chidwick, Vamplew, Lewis, Silver, Ziyard, Kamel
Russia: Bilokur, Puchkov, Gulyy, Lahkov, Kurganov, Vitkind
France: Hairabedian, Grospellier, Pecheux, Ktorza, Lacey, Pollack

Team play poker has never gained considerably popularity but for a very few notable exceptions, like the Caesars Cup. Also, Olympics by definition allow all nations to participate, not just a select few, as well as amateur players, who are clearly excluded by the $50,000 participation fee. Still, this may well start something new if the community supports the idea.