The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is considered to be the most popular poker tournament in the world for professional poker players. The 2015 WSOP is scheduled to start at the end of May at the Rio in Las Vegas. The 2015 WSOP is expected to attract a number of celebrities and professional athletes from all over the globe who have a passion to play poker.
Whether they play an individual sport or a team sport, professional athletes are always competitive and that’s one of the reasons why they flock to the WSOP. While they are professionals at their sport, they haven’t yet reached the same level in professional poker and get excited about the opportunity to play fellow athletes in a poker game and test their skills against one another.
A number of retired professional sportsmen like Australian cricket legend Shane Warne, Brazilian football star Ronaldo, tennis great Boris Becker and three time NFL superbowl champion Richard Seymour have taken to playing poker on a regular basis and have done rather well. Current superstars such as Spanish tennis ace Rafael Nadal, NBA star Paul Pierce, Brazilian captain Neymar Junior and legendary swimmer Michael Phelps also play the poker circuit on a regular basis.
NBA star Paul Pierce who went as far as Day 3 during the 2014 WSOP Main Event will be hoping he can do ever better at the 2015 WSOP. In a statement, Pierce said
There’s a certain group of people who believe that poker is a game of luck and has very little to do with skill. The Global Poker Index (GPI) under the leadership of Alex Dreyfus has not subscribed to this view and during the last couple of years has aggressively promoted the fact that poker is a sport and the final outcome is determined by a players skills and not their luck. If this is proven to be the case there could be concequences for players around the world such as in the UK where we reported in March where players could be taxed.
Most professional athletes who have a passion for poker tend to agree more with Dreyfus’s view as they believe that a player’s strategy and experience vastly determines how well they perform at a poker table. The 2015 WSOP is expected to draw close to 50 professional and globally recognized athletes to the poker tables in Vegas.
