The Philippines licensed and GGNetwork-powered online poker operator Natural8 has announced the appointment to its “Team Hot” professional player line-up of Asian poker aces Kitty Kuo, Xuan Liu and Dong Kim.
The Asian-facing operator has also signed the influential Chinese poker pro and poker commentator Xiao Chung as a “Friend of Natural8”. He will be providing poker lessons on China’s major broadcasting platforms, sharing real-time cash game and tournament strategies and thought processes with internet participants, and generally helping players improve their tournament and cash game performance, Natural8 said in a press release this week.
Team Hot will promote the Natural8.com brand and appear for the operator across the live tournament circuit as well as on Twitch.tv, where they will be streaming while playing poker on the operator’s website.
The Natural8 press statement includes biographies on the professional players:
Kitty Kuo is one of Asia’s top female poker players and In 2009, she won the Red Dragon Cup and simultaneously claimed the first APOY (Asian Player of The Year). She also championed the Asian Global Poker Index rankings in 2013, and in 2016 joined the Global Poker League (GPL) as a member of Team San Francisco Rush.
Her current accumulated winnings exceeds $1.2 million and she has achieved results in the recent WPT, APPT, EPT, WSOP and other international events. Among her major final tables are the EPT Barcelona High Roller, Aussie Millions Main Event, WSOP Shootout bracelet event, Hollywood Poker Open Main Event and WPT Malta Main Event.
She is well travelled, brash, bold and highly regarded as one of Asia’s top poker players even in the western community.
Xuan Liu is a Canadian born Chinese and a University of Waterloo graduate. She is also a famous female poker pro in the international poker community. In 2011 she finished third in the EPT San Remo Main Event, whereas in 2012, she finished 4th in the PCA main event, making a pair of successful accomplishments in her resume, winning more than 1.6 million USD in lifetime tournament cashes. In the online poker realm, Xuan is no slouch either by amassing cashes of over $560,000 in online tournaments as well. She is also a poker coach in her native Canada.
Xuan and Kuo appeared on the poker themed reality tv show Girls Got Game, which follows eight dynamic female poker pros as they compete in both Macau and Las Vegas.
Dong Kim is an American born Korean professional high stakes online poker pro, and is known as one of the best Heads-Up players in the world. In 2015, he won the SCOOP $20,000 USD HU event, which is one of the most difficult and competitive online tournaments in the world. He also played a 15,000 hand HU challenge against fellow online poker pro Nick Frame, successfully beating him for a hefty $103,992 along with the $15,000 side bet. In 2015, Dong Kim along with Doug Polk, Bjorn Li and Jason Les – four of the top HU players in the world won a collective $732,713 worth of virtual money off Claudico, the Artificial Intelligence-infused poker bot created by Carnegie Mellon University.