Poker and Hearthstone to Clash in First Crossover Tournament

7 years ago
First Poker and Hearthstone Crossover Tournament
14:46
23 May

The worlds of poker and Hearthstone are set to collide once again with a 3-on-3 match-up to decide which set of card fanatics are the best crossover team.

In the appropriately titled ‘World’s Collide’ tournament, Team Poker Central have lined up Maria Ho, Doug ‘WGCRider’ Polk and the Twitch poker boss Scott Ball to take on the Hearthstone might of Team Amazon Coins of Jason "Amaz" Chan, Esteban “AKAWonder” Serrano and David “Dog” Caero.


Hearthstone has been a firm favourite among poker players for a few years now, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospelier becoming the first dual sponsored player late last year and poker legend Daniel Negreanu also a huge fan of the game, having taken on ‘ElkY’ in a show-match at the BlizzCon Hearthstone World Championships earlier this year.

The crossover challenge may not have announced the exact format quite yet, two match back-to-back challenges of some sort have been mooted, but the split-format has already sparked the interest of other poker pros.

Justin ‘ZeeJustin’ Bonomo, never far from the news these days with his protest against PokerStars going viral, tweeted:

Apparently Poker + Hearthstone is an esports format now. If anyone is looking for some high stakes action, HMU.”

He added:


How many people would play a 5k tournament: half Hearthstone, half HU NL? Could we get 8? 16?

— Justin Bonomo (JustinBonomo) 19 May 2016


He has already had replies from some big names in poker – Fedor Holz and Jason Mo both being up for it – with calls for Negreanu to make it four and others interested also.

As to who is likely to come out top in the 3 v 3 challenge match, without knowing the format, it’s anybody’s guess. Both teams have huge experience in their own fields, but much less so in the other games, Twitch boss Ball for example having learned Hearthstone last May along with Negreanu, but Polk taking up the game only last week!

The Hearthstone team is sponsored by AmazonCoins, according to Alex Weldon over at part-time poker:

A micropayment system to facilitate the purchase of Android apps and in-game purchases the latter is of course where the Hearthstone connection comes in, as players can expand their collection of cards by purchasing “packs,” which is more or less a requirement for competitive play.”

Their team includes top-flight Hearthstone players who are expected to have at least a reasonable knowledge of poker, although the format chosen will decide just how much of an edge the poker trio of Ball, Polk and Maria Ho will have.


The World’s Collide tournament will be casted by Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson on May 24th, starting at 23:00 CEST. You can catch the whole event streamed live through the Poker Central Twitch channel.


Articles 2284

Andrew from Edinburgh, Scotland, is a professional journalist, international-titled chess master, and avid poker player.Read more

Comments

You need to be logged in to post a new comment

No Comments found.