Players of the US-based poker site Hollywood Poker noticed that in June of this year the site where they used to play real money online poker ceased operations. But after several months away, Hollywood Poker is back, albeit with a different face and mission.
The newly relaunched Hollywood Poker appears to provide 2 main services:
• reporting current events regarding famous people (in all walks of life) playing poker
• providing a chance to play free poker against some of those celebrities over a Facebook app
Under new owners PLAOR, owners of RedKings.com, Hollywood Poker offers free-to-play online poker (aka play money poker). The aimed of this revamped Hollywood Poker, says PLAOR CEO Mark Caldwell, is to facilitate social engagement between amateur and celebrity poker players and using tournaments and other poker opportunities to raise money for various charities.
Currently more than 160 A-list and B-list celebrities have signed up with the new Hollywood Poker, including the likes of James Woods, Scott Baio, Dennis Quaid, Kevin Pollack, Ray Romano, Peter Facinelli and Kelly Hu. Pollack, who finished 134th out of 6,598 competitors at this year’s 2012 WSOP Main Event will be one of the celebrities playing at the new play money online poker site.
Since the relaunch about 8,000 players have signed up for the new Hollywood Poker so far.
Also relaunching this week, incidentally, is the new and improved Full Tilt Poker, now under ownership of formal rival Poker Stars, although neither of these two sites will be offerring real money online poker to U.S. players.