Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul made his Global Poker League (GPL) debut earlier last week playing in the newly launched Cube against Fabrice Soulier of the Paris Aviators.
Paul who is by no means a professional poker pro ended up beating Soulier and surprising quite a few of his L.A Sunset teammates.
When the GPL announced that the three time Emmy award winning actor was joining the GPL, it created quite a bit of stir and upped the celebrity quotient of the L.A. Sunset franchise significantly.
Speaking on the opportunity of being a part of the GPL, Paul said that he was excited to be a part of GPL.
In a statement, Paul said,
[The Cube is] new, and it feels like we're ahead of the curve with this. I'm excited to be a part of this, even though it's completely out of my league. I'm nowhere near a professional poker player, but I do love the game. I respect the game a lot. I'm just happy to be here. I'm going to try to play as many of these as possible and collect points for my team.
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Alex Dreyfus, the founder of the GPL said that there was a big internal debate about including a celebrity in the GPL, since the GPL was promoted as league where the best poker players in the world would compete against each other. However Dreyfus said that Paul’s passion for the game and his genuine interest in playing poker made him the right choice for an exception to be made. Dreyfus also pointed out that Paul had played in the 2015 World Series Of Poker’s Main Event without a sponsor showing his love for the game.
He believes that Paul’s commitment to poker will help popularize the concept of GPL as well as his L.A team and ultimately help the game itself.
Paul has been playing poker for a long time. He started 12 years ago playing home games and online poker. Although he doesn’t have the skills of a pro, Paul believes he is a good player and is confident in his game.
Dreyfus hopes that having Paul play in the Cube will improve the Cube’s visibility. According to him the Cube is an experiment and the current schedule of 33 matches in Las Vegas is a good opportunity to test the Cube’s technology and its popularity with its viewers.
