Poker Pro Antonio Esfandiari Tapped as Face of World Poker Tour

Feelin' the love: Poker pro Antonio Esfandiari is introduced by WPT founder and CEO Steve Lipscomb as the new face of the WPT. (Bodog Beat Image)

Reporting live from what is now thankfully a sunny Los Angeles, it's the Bodog Beat!!!

Thank you, thank you. We're out here to bring you all of the happenings from the WPT LA Poker Classic and catch all of the madness for ourselves. It was cloudy and overcast when we got here, not the LA we see on TV all the time. Thankfully, the skies are now blue and we are surrounded by beautiful celebrities hanging on our every word sweaty, kind of smelly, poker players who ignore us. Ah, the glamor of poker tournament media life.

Upon arriving, we checked into our hotel and headed straight for the scene of the action, the Commerce Casino. We arrived in time to catch the WPT press conference featuring a big announcement from WPT founder and CEO Steve Lipscomb, something we were assured was a first for the WPT. And that was correct. For the first time the WPT has chosen to use a specific poker player to promote their enterprises, and that person is Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari.

Esfandiari was introduced as the logical choice for the position as he won the WPT LA Poker Classic in 2004, taking home $1.4 million, and has cashed in a total of eight different WPT events. The promotional video touted him as embodying the spirit of the WPT, and the arrangement seems to work well for both parties.

However, as Lipscomb pointed out himself during the speech, most well-known poker players are already representing other brands and their prerequisite was that the "Face of the WPT" have no other attachments. The logical interpretation of this would be that Esfandiari was maybe not the first choice for the position, but the first without any prior engagements. Our sources confirm this, but no word as to who was considered before him.

As the new face of the WPT, Esfandiari's face will be attached to promotions for Club WPT (the new subscription poker site in the US), the new WPT Traktor Poker Tour in China and the WPT Poker Made Millionaires, of which there have been 84 so far with a new one coming very soon.

So, expect to see many, many magic tricks in association with WPT promotions, especially when the new season airs on GSN.

We'll continue with our live WPT reports from the Commerce, but maybe leave out the fact that we already busted out of the media tournament, which is why we have time to write this right now. Or we could just tell you everything.