Bill Perkins Announces 10 New Hosts For The Thirst Lounge

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  • Namita Ghosh February 15, 2019
  • 2 Minutes Read

Hedge Fund Manager, film director and poker playing millionaire Bill Perkins is well known for his passion towards poker streaming and taking up most of his time these days is his streaming endeavor, The Thirst Lounge.

Perkins has been one of the flag-bearers for poker streaming and is a popular streamer himself. He is known to share glimpses of his millionaire lifestyle while playing poker on the move from his luxurious yacht. His past efforts have seen him teaming up with other popular poker streamers like Jeff Gross, Matt Staples, Jaimie Staples and Dan Bilzerian and though Perkin’s ambitious streaming plans sailed into choppy waters for some time, he has now put his foot on the pedal and is making a major thrust to revamp The Thirst Lounge!

In that vein, Perkins announced 10 new hosts for his The Thirst Lounge streaming channel, namely, Adam Klein, Cat Valdes, John Gonzalez, Ebony Kenney, Voislav Ivanovski, Jon Pardy, Justin Kelly, Kelly Minkin, Matthew Forsythe and Priestley Leng. His efforts seemed to have caught the attention of online poker brand partypoker that has decided to officially sponsor The Thirst Lounge.

These efforts by Perkins could not have come at a better time, just when the rage for streaming is at an all-time high.

In India, though, poker streaming is still in a nascent stage and largely non-existent. Young Gun Sharad Rao is one of the early adopters from India to have taken up active poker streaming. Rao recently took on a self-imposed bankroll challenge to turn a starting bankroll of ₹2,000 to ₹10,000 playing micro stakes cash games on domestic online sites. In case you missed our feature on Rao`s challenge, check out all the details here.

partypoker Becomes Official Partner For The Thirst Lounge

While Perkins will be awarding $10,000 to each of the 10 hosts on a 50/50 stake, as part of stated “wider streaming strategy”, partypoker will be matching the $10,000 stake for each player. In effect, the stakes have now been doubled to $20,000 for each player.

“Thanks to partypoker for putting their faith in The Thirst Lounge,” Perkins stated, in a press release. “We work with a fun, outgoing group. It will be a pleasure to watch them grow and develop The Thirst Lounge as well as their own brands. I am thrilled that partypoker is “thirsty” to come on board and support this exciting venture with us!”

 

Perkins’ Passion For Streaming

Perkins was first introduced to streaming by veteran Jeff Gross in 2016 and before long, he had teamed up with Matt Staples and Jaime Staples for Streamboat – a venture where he along with the Staples’ brothers started streaming from his yacht. Streamboat met with raving reviews and in 2017, PokerStars stepped into the scene and agreed to sponsor Streamboat 2 with Kevin Martin joining the group. Sadly, the Hurricane Irma on the British Virgin Islands in September 207 saw the plans cut short. The Staples were evacuated off the boat and Streamboat 2 failed to set sail.

Thirst Lounge

Perkins attempted a re-launch of his live stream, this time re-christened as The Thirst Lounge with Staples and Jess Gross in the mix. The Thirst Lounge focused not just on poker but the high stakes lifestyle, occasionally welcoming on-board other celebrities such as Dan Bilzerian. But the venture failed to gather much stream.

 

The Thirst Lounge Gets 10 New Hosts

Perkin’s ambitious plan to revamp The Thirst Lounge entails developing his poker-streaming channel as a platform for 10 “dynamic, young, energetic, charismatic, outrageous people. To select the right candidates, Perkins ran a contest called ‘Lunacy’ and the winners of the challenge won themselves a bankroll of $10,000 each from Perkins on a 50/50 stake, with an additional $10,000 from partypoker.

The live streaming has already begun on-board Perkins’ yacht on February 14. Prior to taking off on the yacht, the crew of these 10 ardent hosts gathered in Houston. Evidently the group was upbeat and the party got pretty wild. One of the hosts Joe Pardy found himself in the short-end of an alcohol induced prop bet. Pardywho had won the Big Brother Season 2 ended up agreeing to get fellow host Kelly Minkin’s name tattooed on him if Perkins agreed to cough up the $1,000. Perkins promptly accepted leaving Pardy with no option to back out from the bet and he had to get Minkin’s name and Twitter handle tattooed to his thigh for a measly $1,000!

While the group looks set to have fun on the yacht, they will also be streaming on-board and from different locales. Perkins plans for them to stream seven days a week, with at least two different hosts per day on the channel. Entertainment remains his focus for now. “I hope it expands. We want to be ambassadors of poker, of aspirational living around the world. So the end goal is for it not to end.”

Perkins shared a promo video for the upcoming stream on Twitter.

According to Perkins, the audience will benefit from the diverse content these hosts will deliver. “I think they are going to see lively, engaging, funny people playing poker, winning money, interacting with fans, explaining why they did things and also learning about these characters, in real life.”

To watch poker stream videos on The Thirst Lounge click here.

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