The poker site that bears his name, IveyPoker, just announced that it will be launching “Ivey League” which will be a new poker training site. While the new training website is currently up, there is no real information about what it is and no details regarding cost or content posted on the site’s homepage.
Didn’t You Just Buy Leggo?
Industry insiders find it curious that Ivey Poker will be launching a new training site given that IveyPoker already owns LeggoPoker which has plenty of brand awareness in the online poker industry. Back in February 2013 the site released a statement that said the purchase of LeggoPoker was to serve as a foundation for a new product that would offer subscription-based poker training. It is all but certain that LeggoPoker is simply being rebranded as Ivey League and will serve as the hub of poker training for their players. Rebranding the old site to match the mothership makes a lot more logical sense than launching a brand new entity from scratch.
Teach Us Phil, You’re Our Only Hope
While Ivey is considered to be one of the best players in the world, nobody has branded him as being the best poker teacher in the world. However, since taking over LeggoPoker, he has headlined some content on the site, along with 2012 WSOP Main Event winner Greg Merson. LeggoPoker boasts a huge stable of successful poker players who regularly crank out a wide variety of poker instructional videos. LeggoPoker was founded by popular online pro Aaron Jones, who is currently an Ivey Pro sponsored player. If LeggoPoker is being rebranded as Ivey League, the “new” poker training site stands to absorb over 1,700 videos.
Ivey Poker’s Other Holdings
Ivey Poker is certainly being aggressive in the marketplace considering the lack of governance in many states in the USA for legalizing online poker. Earlier this year, they released a free-to-play social poker Facebook game. When the game launched back in July, the site said that they wanted to accelerate players’ education so that making the jump from a free poker app to real money tables would not be a difficult one. It stands to reason that IveyPoker is planning on funneling players from a free-to-play Facebook poker game over to Ivey League (aka LeggoPoker) and eventually to real money poker games on their flagship site.
Poker All Star Team
After Black Friday, it seemed that many poker pros would have to go panhandling for sponsorships. Since two of the top poker rooms went out of business, the number of sponsored pros dwindled. With the poker industry picking back up, it seems a grab for big names is once more underway. IveyPoker has been extremely aggressive compared to other rooms, bringing in huge names like Merson, Patrik Antonius, Andrew Lichtenberger, Jennifer Harman and Christian Harder, in addition to the site’s namesake, Phil Ivey.
