Poker news

The “Prince of Poker” has signed a deal to become the poker ambassador for European gaming company Expekt.com.

The deal, which begins May 15, sees Scotty Nguyen become the public face of Expekt.com’s poker operations. Nguyen will post two exclusive video blogs each month, in addition to penning an exclusive monthly strategy column for the site’s poker players.

“I like Expekt.com and its plans,” Nguyen said in a press release announcing the deal. “It will be fun to be part of their future and help them to make their successful poker even more popular. It will be great fun, baby.”

In one sense the deal is a great one for Expekt, given the 46-year-old Nguyen’s laundry list of tournament poker accomplishments. In addition to his win at the 1998 World Series of Poker Main Event, Nguyen holds three more gold bracelets, including the $50,000 HORSE championship at last year’s Series. All told, the Vietnam-born star has racked up over $10 million in tournament winnings over the course of his professional poker career, making him one of the most recognizable faces in the game.

He also currently sits in second place in the BLUFF Magazine Player-of-the-Year race presented by LUGZ. Nguyen has made five final tables already in 2008 including the $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship earlier this month. His earnings for the year have already topped $750,000.

However, the flip side of the deal is that Nguyen isn’t squeaky clean on the business and public relations side of things. His $50,000 HORSE win last year came with some unexpected baggage once ESPN aired footage of him engaging in a fair amount of bad behavior at the table, including berating the cocktail servers and fellow final tablist Michael DeMichele. Nguyen also played sponsorship roulette at last year’s WSOP, wearing a Full Tilt patch during the HORSE event but sporting PokerStars patches for the rest of the Series.

One thing is for sure: if Nguyen has the kind of summer in 2009 that he did last year, Expekt’s logo will get plenty of airtime when ESPN begins airing its WSOP programming later in the year.