PokerWorks

With many recent decisions to its roster of players and company in general, PartyGaming has been on a roll with news releases and interesting developments. After a multi-million dollar purchase of World Poker Tour assets and the most recent signing of Kara Scott to its roster of players, the latest news involves a sponsorship agreement with Tony G and the purchase of his assets pertaining to Tony G Poker.

The announcement came on January 21 that PartyGaming would be working on several levels with Tony G, known on his birth certificate as Antanas Guoga and better known in some Australian circles as “The Mouth from Down Under.” First, Tony signed to be a sponsored player of PartyPoker, which will consist of wearing the “Team Party” colors and playing on behalf of the online gaming site at live events around the world as well as online. In addition, he will be participating in the PartyPoker.com Premiere League IV tournament when it is played in Vegas in February and filmed for television broadcast. He commented on his first blog entry on the PartyPoker website, “The daddy of them all to me though is the Premier League and I am focused and ready for the challenge in Vegas in February… After coming second and third in the Premier League in the last two years I am so determined to take it down this time.”

His first live tournament stop, though, will be at the Aussie Millions in Melbourne in January. As Tony wrote on the blog, “Melbourne is one of the best cities in the world. It is full of friends, fans and family and is like a second home.” The press release also noted that he will be competing in the Aussie Millions Main Event with fellow PartyPoker players Bodo Sbrzesny and Stewart Scott, not to mention 43 online qualifiers. He noted, “If one of the Party qualifiers knocks me out of the Main Event I will buy them a bike. First of all though I will ride it out myself - I know when it is bike time!”

The second news coming from the announcement was that PartyGaming entered into an agreement to purchase the assets of TonyGPoker.com, the website that was launched by Tony in recent years to satisfy his passion for online poker and allow him to play against opponents from around the world. But the site will continue running. Per Tony, “It’s business as usual for TonyGPoker.com. The exciting acquisition of its assets by PartyGaming will create a larger more flexible and productive playing environment.” However, the popular Sunday Bike Ride promotion will be moved to PartyGaming site Noble Poker, and players will soon be migrated completely to Noble in the future.

Tony brings to PartyPoker a long list of poker accomplishments, including 15 World Series of Poker cashes, a WPT victory at the 2006 Bad Boys of Poker tournament, and numerous cashes and victories. He also looks to parlay future winnings into more charitable endeavors, as he has already donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to places like Moscow orphanages.

PartyGaming released a statement regarding the new partnership: “We’re delighted to welcome Tony to Team Party. Tony is undoubtedly one of poker’s biggest characters in the game - a personal deal for him made huge sense. We are also happy to have acquired the assets of TonyGPoker.com and look forward to welcoming his players on board.”