Poker entrepreneur Antanas “Tony G” Guoga wins seat in European Parliament

A great many people are concerned by the results of the recent European Parliamentary elections for a variety of reasons, but poker players throughout Europe have at least one bit of good news amidst it all. Antanas Guoga, better known to the poker community as “Tony G,” has won his bid for a seat in Lithuania with the country’s Liberal Party.

Guoga is an accomplished poker player with $3.7 million in cashes and a number of WSOP and WPT final tables to his name. He’s also the founder of PokerNews.com, and TonyBet.com. The latter began as a sports betting and casino site, but has recently added Open-Face Chinese Poker to its offerings, making it the first gambling site to jump on that particular trend.

Guoga seems to be a man who likes to have multiple projects on the go, having announced his candidacy at almost exactly the same time as he launched TonyBet’s Open-Face Chinese server. At least one of those has proved to be a resounding success, as not only did he win his seat, but was also the Liberal candidate with the greatest number of votes.

The Lithuanian Liberal Party is a pro-European Union party, which made them underdogs in this election, in face of rising nationalism and dissatisfaction with the EU across Europe. Nonetheless, they performed better than expected, receiving 16.52% support and two seats.

Hopefully his political success won’t keep him from pressing on with TonyBet, as the internet poker community sorely needs a good place to play Open-Face Chinese; while their current offering looks promising, it’s still sparsely-populated and in beta.

Alex Weldon is a game designer by day and poker tournament wizard by night. You can read more from Alex at www.benefactum.ca and follow him on Twitter at @benefactumgames

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