Well, I guess they’re both card games.
The online poker company Full Tilt is now sponsoring G2 Esports’ Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft team. Hearthstone has over $40 million players and earns $20 million a month. In 2015, professional players earned over $2 million in prize money. It’s easily the most popular card game in the growing esports scene.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1855746,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,games,","session":"D"}']This is interesting, since you could argue that Hearthstone is competition against online poker. However, Full Tilt is hoping that the similarities will help it recruit fans to its online poker platform, the only one of its kind to be available on the Steam digital store (it’ll be there by the end of the year after it received approval from Steam Greenlight).
G2’s Hearthstone group is Team Nihilum, composed of players Lifecoach, Lothar, Rdu, and Thijs. They joined G2 in early October. Notably, Lifecoach was previously a professional poker player before moving to Hearthstone, so Full Tilt’s notion that fans could crossover doesn’t seem too far-fetched. Two professional poker players also battled each other at the 2015 Hearthstone World Championship.
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“Esports players love the thrill of competition, the battle of wits, and facing off against a tough opponent as they move into the unknown,” Mark Ody, marketing director at Full Tilt, was quoted as saying on G2’s site. “That’s why we think that they’ll love learning more about poker, which is one of the modern world’s finest games, because it is a great mix of turn-based strategy and role-playing games.”
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