A New Year often sees the contracts of online poker sites’ sponsored pros and ambassadors end, and those players leave their posts, often for pastures new. This has been the case over at partypoker where no fewer than six of the site’s ambassadors have left the company and will no longer sport the famous orange diamond in online and at live poker events worldwide.
Brazilian Day Kotoviezy and Ireland’s Louise Butler, two of partypoker’s female contingent, have left their posts as sponsored pros. Kotoviezy cashed in several partypoker LIVE events while sponsored by partypoker, including a seventh-place finish in a €10,300 buy-in High Roller at the 2018 partypoker MILLIONS Barcelona Grand Final, a finish worth a career-best €85,000.
Butler has long been the number one ranked Irish female player in the online poker tournament world. Butler is honing in on $825,000 in online cashes, with $400,000 of that impressive sum stemming from partypoker tournaments.
Finnish superstar Joni Jouhkimainen is another top-level player no longer partnered with partypoker. The Finn ended 2021 on fire, with five cashes at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and WSOP Europe festival, three of which ended in final table finishes. Jouhkimainen finished second in both the €5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha (€126,091) event and the €25,000 Platinum High Roller (€320,415) event.
Kotoviezy’s fellow Brazilian Joao Simao is another superstar who has departed partypoker. Simao had been with partypoker since 2016 and is into double figures regarding POWERFEST titles. He is a high-volume grinder of the highest order, so expect to see him at the partypoker tables despite no longer having a contract with the site.
High roller specialists Isaac Haxton and Mikita Badziakouski are the other two casualties from the latest roster cull. Haxton, one of the biggest poker tournament winners of all-time with $27.67 million in live cashes, left partypoker on New Year’s Eve, according to his Twitter post.
Badziakouski is another elite grinder who ended 2021 in style. The Belarusian, who is a regular in Super High Roller events worldwide, took down Event #85 of the 2021 WSOP, the $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em High Roller, for $1,462,043 and his first bracelet. Amazingly, that was only Badziakouski’s eighth-largest live score.
The current Team partypoker webpage shows six ambassadors in addition to five members of its Twitch Team.
Hollywood A-lister Kevin Hart, partypoker LIVE President John Duthie, Patrick Leonard, recent signing Yuri Dzivielevski, Frenchman Benjamin Pollak, and former world champion boxer Carl Froch make up the site’s ambassadors.
Jaime Staples, Jeff Gross, Matthew Staples, Courtney Gee, Monika Zukowicz, and Lilian Erdmann represent the partypoker Twitch Team.
