Home / Poker News December 2011 / The Poker Grapevine – Jesper Hougaard Signs With Bet24
The Poker Grapevine – Jesper Hougaard Signs With Bet24
Posted by: Mark Baldwing - Sun, 2011-12-04 16:14
You may not have heard of Bet24 Poker yet, but now you have no choice: the
on line poker site has just hired Danish Poker pro Jesper Hougaard to represent the site and to play online there. Bet24 is a European-facing online poker room, which is powered by the OnGame network.
Hougaard has become a pro back in 2007 and since then, he’s amassed an impressive list of accomplishments. His online success was complimented by his various live wins: in 2008, he won a $1.5k event at the WSOP, taking down a $610.3k prize. He secured another WSOP bracelet in the 2009 WSOPE. Testimony to his online prowess is the fact that he won the PokerStars Sunday million twice.
In regards to his Bet24 deal, Hougaard said he was excited about joining the team and that he hoped he would turn the brand into Denmark’s leading online betting destination.
Hougaard will play in the EPT’s Prague Main Event in December, but his deal with the site will only go into effect starting January 1st 2012.
In other news: John Campos and Chad Ellie will apparently be tried in March. Campos and Ellie are two of the 11 people indicted on Black Friday for the facilitation of illegal money transfers between online poker rooms and American online poker players.
They had both filed motions aiming to dismiss the indictments issues by US Attorney Preet Bharara. US District Judge Dave Kaplan was the one who sent them to trial after carefully considering their dismissal requests and the accusations formulated in the indictment.
The main angle that the attorneys of the indicted tried to exploit was the game of skill angle: basically, they argued that the UIGEA provisions according to which transferring funds to online gambling companies was illegal didn’t apply in their case, since poker was a game of skill.
At their trial, the issue of whether or not online poker can be considered gambling is likely to come up again.
