As was announced during the first half of the year, Global Poker Index is moving forward with the ambitious project that could change the way we see the sport in the media and in a massive way. It was through a press release that the CEO for the company, Alexandre Dreyfus , informed everybody about the 5 million dollars they have already raised thanks to Chinesse and European investors; the number could go up in the States.

Regarding the first details we had, this newfound optimism, has raised expectations and now, it is being said that there will be 12 sponsored franchises representing different cities in the world: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas , Toronto  and Sao Paulo   are the candidate cities for the American Continent, while London , Paris , Barcelona , Prague , Moscow  and Hong Kong  would be a part of what the organization calls  Eurasia.

The competition will last for around 14 weeks with matches that combine live, online and/or televised events. The teams will be selected by draft and three players per team will be eligibl, among the top 1000 players for the GPI ranking.  Also, each franchise will incroporate 2 more wild cards (that may be famous guests, from the elite world of sports or stars for the world of poker that no longer rank in the lists).

But that is not all. The GPL will also change the way in which we play poker: the main idea was for duels not to last over 30 to 40 minutes, and to accelarate hands digital cards will be used (chips will actually be real) that will allow for a devolpement of the game that is four times faster than what it regularly is.
And for audiences to really be able to enjoy live competetion, the team for MediarexSports&Entertainment created an exclusive staging area, that they hope will be applied to even other sports: The Cube.

The Cube creates a closed environment but completely transparent (think it’s recommended for claustophobes?), where players can’t hear or see the outside, but from the outside, everything is visible.

The cube- global poker league

Notice anything strange in the pic above? The players don’t have seats! This way, they expect to get better emotional reactions and a more dynamic action.

After the  Italian triumph at the first «poker world cup”, the Global Poker Masters, Alex Dreyfus   stated that this would be «the craziest project poker has seen in the past 10 years” and it won’t exclude great events like the EPT or WPT, since they can share the stops and thus make sure to have big international stars present.

Here, at CodigoPoker  we’ll update all of the data for this competition, where we are sure to see some of the greats for our region compete.