Cirque du Soleil founder and the high-stakes nosebleed poker player Guy Laliberté has been rumored to be the main candidate for the next commercial astronaut.
Various sources tells that he’s going to pay a visit to the International Space Station in September - this would make him the seventh private space explorer. Laliberte would be aboard of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft if everything goes as planned.
It has been speculated that Laliberté wants to celebrate and promote Cirque du soleil’s 25th anniversary with his quite expensive flight. Nevertheless this big celebration would cost him $35 million which is the same amount what he has “donated” in poker in the past years - at least according to all rumors circling around his poker games.
Undoubtfully some of the high-stakes players at FullTilt Poker would like to see Laliberté staying on Earth and spend those big dollars to online poker as he is famous of his nosebleed games against top poker professionals online.
According to Forbes Magazine Laliberté is one of the 50 richest billionaires in the world, with a net worth of $2.5 billion, so we can take a guess that his poker career isn’t over after the flight to the stars.
You can find Laliberté on Full Tilt Poker using one of his poker nicknames (not 100% confirmed): “lady marmelade”, “noataima”, “patatino”, “elmariachimacho”, “Bleachbum” and “ahtata”.