Everest Poker Assembles Dream Team
Apr 17, 2008By: Jennifer Newell After two days of interviews, hundreds of hands of poker, and hours of deliberation by a panel of experts, the Everest Poker Dream Team has been chosen. The top players who competed in the Live the Dream promotion and competition over the past six months were announced at the Palais Auersperg in Vienna, Austria.
The players who worked hard to win the prize packages are:
Fernando Festas (Portugal)
Daan Slutter (Netherlands)
Otto Richard (France)
Voitto Rintala (Finland)
Simone Coppari (Italy)
Ghaoudi Machou (France)
Stefanie Bergener (Germany)
Steven van Zadelhoff (Netherlands)
Romain Despres (France)
Pablo Martinez (Spain)
Woooka Kim (Japan)
Each person on the team won a $100,000 prize package, which consists of buy-ins to some of the most prestigious tournaments in the world over the coming year – 2008 EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final, 2008 World Series of Poker main event, two other 2008 WSOP events, two EPT season 5 events, and two World Poker Tour season 7 events. In addition, each winner was awarded $21,000 in cash for related expenses.
All in all, there were 200 qualifiers who traveled to Vienna for the finals of the Live the Dream competition. All qualified online via tournaments, as the top ten winners of weekly qualifiers and the overall points leaders each month. The final 200 had to compete for the top prizes based on online and live poker skills, personality via the interview process, knowledge of the Everest Poker brand, blogging skills via a sample blog entry, and speaking skills. The public voted for their favorite contestants, and the panel of expert judges made the final decisions.
The players who were ultimately chosen to comprise the Live the Dream team will begin traveling around the world in April to represent Everest Poker and try to parlay their prize packages into even more money through the tournaments they enter.
