Jude Ainsworth joins the impressive roster of Team PokerStars PROs

GALWAY MAN JOINS TEAM POKERSTARS PRO UK AND IRELAND

Leading Irish poker player Jude Ainsworth has been signed as the latest member of Team PokerStars PRO.

A relative newcomer to the professional poker circuit, Jude, who plays on PokerStars as ‘j.thaddeus’, has proved his ability to match the best at poker tables over the last year. He will strengthen the expanding Team PokerStars PRO UK and Ireland team.

Jude Ainsworth from Galway, Ireland, achieved his breakthrough live result when he won the Irish Poker Championship in 2008, collecting €145,000. He continued his success this year when he beat 501 other players at the $10,000 Spring Championship of Online Poker Main Event on PokerStars and collected $963,338.

Jude will be playing in the new UK & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT), which will see him playing on his home turf in Galway from December 11-14, 2009. The events are aimed at both amateurs and professionals and will provide players with a first-class poker experience at an affordable local level.

Jude said: “I’m really looking forward to competing in the UKIPT and being part of such an exciting tour. Undoubtedly the event I’m most looking forward to is the return to my hometown Galway on the 11th December.”

Other top names from around the UK and Ireland such as former England footballer Teddy Sheringham and Team PokerStars PRO Vicky Coren will also be competing at the UKIPT events.

Daily satellites are running now on www.pokerstars.com for as little as $0.25 or 250FP.

Full details of the PokerStars UKIPT schedule can be found below. For more information and updates please see http://www.ukipt.com

About www.pokerstars.com

PokerStars is the world’s largest poker site with more than 28 million members around the world. It’s the first choice of the world’s top players with more daily tournaments than anywhere else with the best security online. More hands have been dealt on PokerStars than any other site, that’s over 34 billion hands dealt to date and more than 206 million tournaments played.

PokerStars operates worldwide under the license from the Isle of Man Government. A recent addition to the PokerStars family, PokerStars.IT, operates in Italy under the Italian Government license.

PokerStars is in the record books, boasting the Guinness World Record for ’Largest Online Poker Tournament’ and ‘Most Players on an Internet Poker Room’.

PokerStars regularly sets the bar high, staging some of the biggest online and live poker tournaments in the world:

• The World Championship of Online Poker (www.wcoop.com) is the premier yearly online poker tournament series in the world. The 2009 WCOOP generated a total prize pool of over $51 million
• The European Poker Tour (www.ept.com) attracts the best players and currently generates the biggest prize pool of any poker tour
• The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) staged on the shores of Paradise Island in the Bahamas is where thousands of players compete for a share of millions in prize money
• The Latin American Poker Tour (www.lapt.com) unites the best players in South America
• The Asia Pacific Poker Tour (www.appt.com) does the same across the Pacific
• The World Cup of Poker, a unique fixture on the poker calendar that combines the online and live poker worlds for a team challenge that pitches nation against nation
• PokerStars is also the official sponsor of the; Russian Poker Tour, The Italian Poker Tour, The Czech-Slovak Poker Tour, Australia-New Zealand Poker Tour

PokerStars is also home to an elite team of sponsored players known as Team PokerStars Pro – a group of established and up and coming players that travel the world competing in international tournaments. For a full list of Team PokerStars Pros visit /team-pokerstars/.

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