On April 2nd, 2009, PokerStars recently announced the signing of World Series of Poker 2009 Main event champion and runner-up Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov from its team poker professionals. Both players will promote the PokerStars brand name in online and live poker events and will represent the online site at different poker tournaments all over the world.
Peter Eastgate from Denmark became the youngest ever World Series of Poker main event champion at the age of twenty-two years old, erasing a record previously held by Phil Hellmuth when he won the 1989 WSOP Main Event at the age of twenty-four. Eastgate set aside college to focus on his online poker player and it is very clear that his decision paid off spectacularly by taking home $9,152,416.
Eastgate proved that his WSOP win was no fluke in January of this year when he won a total of $343,000 for winning the $5,000 event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. Despite finishing in 2nd place, it was Demidov who really captured the interest of the poker community throughout the year because of his accomplishments of reaching the final table of the WSOP Main Event and the WSOP Europe main event in the same year.
The twenty-seven year old poker pro from Russia won a total of $608,995 for his 3rd place finished in the WSOP Europe Main Event and then week later won a total of $5,809,595 at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Both poker players represented PokerStars throughout the World Series of Poker final table and continued to do so in a minimum capacity in the following months.
They have since been promoted to Team PokerStars Pro and bring the number of poker pros on the team to 35, joining the likes of Vanessa Rousso, Joe Hachem, Chris Moneymaker, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein and others. Both poker players will be playing on the site using their own names.
04/21/2009 20:11 PM