Seeing a player you enjoy watching or know personally unveiled as an ambassador for an online poker room is always a good thing. It means you’re likely to see more of them, whether in big live events, online tournaments, social media, streams or elsewhere. After all, they’re being paid to be visible.
But even if you don’t know them, follow them, or have ever heard of them, if you play poker these appointments should be a cause for optimism. It means more visibility for the game, that sites have budgets to invest, that more new players will sign up, that poker is growing.
Recent months have seen a number of big new deals signed and older ones extended. Let’s take a look at some of those making a splash.
Daniel Negreanu: GGPoker
Arguably the world’s most famous poker player, Daniel Negreanu is the go-to guy when a movie or TV show needs an ‘as himself’ performance in a poker scene. He’s played poker all over the world… as well as in a Katy Perry music video, an X-Men movie and more. The simple equation is, Negreanu = credibility when it comes to poker.
So it is that the Canada-born Negreanu has traditionally represented the world’s biggest poker operators. The face of PokerStars for more than a decade, Negreanu’s move to GGPoker in 2019 signaled a shift in the industry that has seen the latter overtake the former when it comes to player numbers in the online streets.
The news that Negreanu has extended his contract with GGPoker — the company that now owns the WSOP brand as well as a share of the popular Hustler Casino Live stream — came via his agent, Brian Balsbaugh. Expect to see more of that GGPoker logo he wears so often.
Kristen Foxen: WePoker
Former partypoker pro Kristen Foxen is already off to a hot 2025, winning two PokerGO Tour events and cashing for over $1.1M to take a big lead on the Women’s Money List for the year. Now comes the news that Canada’s Foxen has signed on as an ambassador for the poker site WePoker.
The presence of so much Chinese text in the announcement — plus the fact that WePoker may not be widely known in the West — is one giveaway that it’s an Asia-facing site, or as Foxen claims in the announcement, ‘the No.1 poker platform in Asia.’
It’s great to see Foxen’s ability and skills recognized across the globe and she’s sure to be a worthy ambassador… even if the promotional image that’s been shared has something of the whiff of an AI glow-up about it…
Doug Polk: ClubWPTGold
If Negreanu is the friendly face of live poker, Doug Polk could be said to be his online equivalent. And like the online version of anything IRL, that comes with a little extra sass.
Vocal, visible and active, Polk always has an opinion and an audience waiting to hear it. So much so that, when he launched his Code: Doug Challenge on the new online sweeps-poker site ClubWPTGold last month, he was hardly backward in coming forward with unfiltered criticism of the platform.
With Polk pulling no punches in his critique of the young site, it looked like they wouldn’t have much of a future together. Right?
Wrong. In classic Polk style, he announced his deal to represent ClubWPT Gold on April Fool’s Day, but it’s no joke.
Phil Hellmuth: BetRivers
The original ‘Poker Brat’, Phil Hellmuth has rarely been spotted over the past few years without a sponsored baseball cap of one brand or another, but these have not been related to online card rooms.
Hellmuth is not one to hide his consultancy and involvement with multiple companies, and the Aria, Bitcoin Latinum and Karate Combat brands have all featured prominently on Hellmuth’s attire in the past. Yet Hellmuth hasn’t been tied to an online room since the far-off days of Ultimate Bet.
That changed in January of this year, when Hellmuth was announced as one of the faces of BetRivers, and bagged himself a new cap to wear. He even took on one of the site’s other big names, Phil Galfond, in a streamed online duel just last month.
The Poker Brat has a new hat. Chan, Rast, Comeskey and Koon
Brian Balsbaugh of management agency Poker Royalty posted a thread yesterday celebrating many of the above deals and drawing attention to several more.
These include an Asia-only marketing deal Johnny Chan has signed with ePoker, and an extension to Brian Rast’s ambassadorial role at Phenom Poker.
Balsbaugh also tips the hat to Jason Koon and Caitlin Comeskey, who both inked deals six months ago to represent PokerStars in the USA.
It’s great to see deserving players recognized for their efforts to bring poker to a wider audience and to see sites investing in those who will help grow the game.
The question now is, who will be the next big name to appear with a new patch on their hoodie?
Let us know who deserves it in the comments below.
Featured image courtesy of PokerGO.
