Hollywood Poker, which was in the online poker gaming industry for 8 years, closed down this June without giving any explanation for the same. However, the online poker room transferred the accounts of its loyal poker players to RedKings Poker, where they could either withdraw their funds or continue playing poker if they wished. The good news is that Hollywood Poker is back, but hardly recognizable; in other words, the online poker room has been utterly transformed.
The present owner of Hollywood Poker is PLAOR, a social gambling company. Under its new ownership, Hollywood Poker is no longer a real money poker site; instead it is a free poker site associated with the popular social networking site Facebook.
The unique feature of Hollywood Poker has always been its association with celebrities. Now re-launched, the online poker room still endorses celebrities, as a result of which Facebook users can play online poker against their favourite celebrities. Besides, Hollywood Poker will also raise funds for charitable institutions, which these celebrities support.
Mark Caldwell, chief executive officer at PLAOR, told TechCrunch that, after acquiring the Hollywood Poker brand and assets, PLAOR shut down the real money online poker room and refunded players. He said,
Now we’re moving into social entertainment where we want to help connect users to celebrities by using poker and tournaments and other ways to drive revenue for charities.
Caldwell also said that Hollywood Poker has 160 celebrity members, the most significant of them being Dennis Quaid, Scott Baio, Kevin Pollak, Peter Facinelli, James Woods, and Kelly Hu. Admitting to TechCrunch that the online poker community is not familiar with most of these celebrities, he said that Hollywood Poker had done this on purpose. Explaining it further, he said, “Everybody cares differently about ‘their’ celebrity, whoever that celebrity is, so we need more than just the ‘A-listers’, if you know what I mean.”
Speaking about future plans, Caldwell said that Hollywood Poker is now introducing the theme of “passion” into its free online poker produce. He said,
We want to connect with celebrities and find out things that they’re passionate about and then create games that they’re passionate about and other users will be passionate about, too.
Besides, Norby Walters, who has long been the host and producer of the Annual Night of 100 Stars, has joined the poker room to bring to it’s poker tables some of the biggest Hollywood stars, celebrities, influencers, and industry giants.
