PartyPoker Nations Cup Teams Announced

PartyPoker has announced the six teams for the third annual PartyPoker Nations Cup, which will be contested April 7-10 in Cardiff, Wales.  Each of the six players on the six teams will pony up $5,000 to play for a first prize of $100,000.  PartyPoker will also add $100,000 to the prize pool.

The six teams hail from Ireland, the United States, Sweden, Holland, Germany, and Great Britain.  Five of the players on each team are be professionals, while the sixth is a PartyPoker.com VIP qualifier.  The lone exception is the United States, which does not have an online qualifier, since PartyPoker.com does not allow customers from the U.S.  Instead of an online qualifier, the American team will have a celebrity player.  Team captain, Robert Williamson III, selected television talk show host and poker aficionado, Montel Williams to compete with him, Freddy Deeb, Chris Ferguson, Jamie Gold, and Chad Brown.

One player from each team will square off in a single table tournament in one of six preliminary heats.  The winner of each heat will receive $20,000 and each player will be awarded points based on where they finish.  In the final single table tournament, the teams will start with different sized chip stacks, which will be determined by the number of points the teams earned in the prelims.  During the final table, the team captains may swap players in and out, although only one player from each team may play at any given time.  As with any tournament, the winner is the team with the last player remaining.

Sweden won the Nations Cup in 2007, while Great Britain won in 2006.

Below are the teams for the 2008 PartyPoker Nations Cup.

Great Britain
Roland de Wolfe - Captain
Joe Beevers
Ian Frazer
Surinder Sunar
Neil Channing
Francis Durbin - qualifier
Germany
Michael Keiner - Captain
Andreas Krause
Benjamin Kang
Sebastian Ruthenberg
Thomas Bihl
Thomas Potzel - qualifier
Holland
Marcel Luske - Captain
Thierry Van den Berg
Eric Van der Berg
Daan Ruiter
Final Pro To Be Chosen
Qirijn Van der Peet - qualifier
Ireland
Padraig Parkinson - Captain
Donnacha O’Dea
Ciaran O’Leary
Liam Flood
Marty Smith
Darren O’Brien - qualifier
Sweden
Bo Sehlstedt - Captain
Anders Henriksson
Mats Rahmn
Johan Storakers
William Thorsson
Johan Ocklind - qualifier
USA
Robert Williamson III - Captain
Jamie Gold
Chris Ferguson
Freddy Deeb
Chad Brown
Montel Williams – Celebrity Player