Maybe people are just jonesing to click-and-raise or maybe various industry stalwarts are starting to see the new poker era that dawned upon us on April 15th isn’t all about tearing down Full Tilt and PokerStars [update: and now Doyle’s Room] in their battle with the DOJ … it’s about building new structures that will become the basis for the game (and industry surrounding it) in the 21st century. (That’s how Vegas-style implosions work.)

Rise — those clothing makers who you may recall came onto the scene a while back as the people trying to remove the d-bagginess from poker fashion — has partnered with Poker Royalty, the pre-eminent poker representative agency, to launch a new fully legal play-for-free online poker site with real cash prizes. Though I do have to wonder when they say their new poker team will include “some of the most recognizable poker players in the world” … are they talking about pros who may or may not have deals currently with dot-net (lol) online sites or the likes of @kevmath?

ZEN Entertainment, the operation powering the new Rise Poker room, is the group that recently launched the Hustler Casino’s online poker site. Though we weren’t necessarily anticipating a clothing line getting in on the action before more casinos … and two doesn’t necessarily make for a statistical trend … Pokerati is feeling good about our newsy speculation that the upcoming 2011 WSOP may indeed be full of free online qualifiers, which would be kinda different from WSOP’s past.

Read below for the official announcement:

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