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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Normally this sorta promotional bit wouldn’t catch my attention for any longer than it takes to press the “mark as spam” button. But for whatever reason, new somethings related to online poker and real money get a second look these days.

And this one … knowing the tensions we’ve seen between California card rooms and the poker sites we used to think of as the “good guys” (before government officials said, “no no they Full Tilt and PokerStars are the bad guys!”) … well, hmm, call me @JeffMadsenObv, but is it coincidence that California’s first brick-and-mortar card room to open an online poker site did so on April 15?

Aha. Exactly.

Likewise, might we see more California casinos opening up online outposts soon … and how many similar ops across the country will be trying to entice players to their no-money real-money tables with WSOP seats? Also kinda curious … a $7,500 cash buyout option for the winner. (That seems pretty good, no?)

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