Meet the First Free Poker Pros

We were kinda just kidding when we suggested this might be the Year of Free/Subscription Poker. I mean we knew we were gonna see some moves into WSOP poker space by various free American-friendly play money sites … but how that would translate at the 2011 World Series (and beyond) wasn\’t so clear. It still isn\’t. But Rise, makers of those douchebag-free poker clothes and now an online poker site … is showing that they will indeed be a force in the free poker future … whatever that might mean.

Personally, I don\’t think they coulda picked better pros — Scotty Nguyen, Maria Ho, Jean Robert Bellande, and Dani Stern, aka Ansky (not pictured) — even better than a Team of Brunson, Hellmuth, and Negreanu, imho. If you don\’t see why these pictured three +Ansky should do incredibly well @RisePoker … well, I could tell you, but, well … let\’s say it goes beyond just \”Asian\”.

We already know about Maria Ho, already repping Team Choctaw and following that deal up with the biggest cash by a woman in WSOP-Las Vegas history … and here\’s a video about Bellande\’s 2011 WSOP travails — complete with talk of the grind of going 0-for-8 so far at the Series, and starting off with nearly $20k of make-up. Very real.

The video is done, curiously enough, by a new site ThePokerFarm … an LOL name in the coming Zyngafied poker era.

And though we don\’t have any pictures of Ansky … we do have a picture of his license plate, which says a little something about the guy: