Both offline and online gambling companies are always looking to promote and market their brand by hiring some of the biggest names in the poker industry to represent them.
The Hollywood Poker Open (HPO) recently confirmed that it had signed Chris Moneymaker to be its Brand Ambassador and Chris will represent HPO starting in November 2014 after attending a Hollywood Poker Open event in February.
Moneymaker is one of the biggest names on the poker circuit. The ex World Series of Poker Main Event Champion may not have won any major tournaments during the past few years but he is still considered to be one of the biggest names in the industry.
Moneymaker will attend tournaments hosted by the HPO in different parts of the country and promote the brand. The HPO website confirms that Chris Moneymaker has already confirmed 8 scheduled appearances.
While the name Hollywood Poker Open suggests that the HPO is more California based, this is not the case as the HPO tends to organize most of its tournaments across Hollywood Casino properties in the United States and a majority of tournaments feature in states such as Mississippi, Ohio and Indiana. This tour scheduling makes it ideal for Moneymaker who lives in Collierville, Tennessee.
Moneymaker has a wife and three kids and prefers to spend as much time as he can with his family. The new partnership with the HPO allows Moneymaker to make money while on tour and at the same time stay relatively close to his family.
In a statement, Chris Moneymaker said
Every event this past season seemed to grow and I thought it was really cool that you started to see some of the same people showing up at different stops. This tells me the word is getting out that these structures are really player-friendly and the vig is lower than their competitors. It was an easy decision when they asked me to come back and represent them for Season 3.
Moneymaker was happy to endorse the HPO brand because of his previous experience playing HPO tournaments and his familiarity with the brand. The HPO will kick start its schedule on the 13th of November in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The second tour stop is scheduled to take place only in 2015. The final stop of the tour will be in Las Vegas at the M Resort Casino and Spa where players will get a crack at $500,000 Guaranteed Championship main event. The previous event raised a prize pool of $1.5 million and many expect that the 2015 main event will surpass this amount, especially with Chris Moneymaker acting as brand ambassador.
