One of the most prominent free agents in poker is now off the market as 2011 PCA Super-High-Roller champion Eugene Katchalov has signed with PokerStars. Katchalov will become a part of the upper-tier of PokerStars sponsored players, wearing the Team Pro patch.
Katchalov burst onto the poker scene with his win at the 2007 WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic, and since then has racked up over $6 million in career live tournament winnings, as well as being considered one of the top high-stakes cash-game players in the world. Katchalov has also been extremely successful in the world of online poker, including a WCOOP bracelet, making him one of the rare “double-threats” in poker.
Katchalov’s PokerStars screen-name will be changed from “MyRabbiFoo” to “E. Katchalov”, and will now be highlighted in the poker lobby. He will join other Team PokerStars Pros like Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Rousso, Vanessa Selbst, Barry Greenstein, Chris Moneymaker, Joe Hachem, Jonathan Duhamel, and the recently signed Viktor “Isildur1” Blom.
The Ukrainian-born Katchalov moved to Brooklyn with his family as a child and picked up poker when he became disinterested in his job as a low-level day-trader after graduating from Stern School of Business at NYU with a double major in International Business and Finance. As he told the PokerStars blog: “I became interested in playing poker during the summer of 2003 when I just graduated from NYU. Me and a couple of my friends were kind of bored one day and one of them mentioned that poker was a fun game and a past time that we could enjoy together. We tried it out and immediately fell in love with it and started to get together and play a couple of times a week.”
When asked about joining Team PokerStars Katchalov said: “It means being a part of what I believe to be a great team of players and a very professional and serious poker site that opens up many opportunities to its players and Pros. I also have a sense of achievement since I am given the opportunity to represent the largest and most successful poker site around. This also gives me the opportunity to grow even further as a world-wide player… I hope I can grow further as a recognized poker player and be able to successfully promote a site that I have always admired and would be proud to be a part of. I would also like to continue doing well in tournaments and possibly help PokerStars bring more of the kinds of games and tournaments that people like to play.”
Still only in his mid-twenties, Katchalov was a highly sought after commodity in the poker world, and he now leaves the small group of unsponsored poker pros such as Phil Galfond, Daniel Alaei, Tom Marchese and Daniel Cates.
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Written by Steve Ruddock on March 24th, 2011