It’s not just professional sports teams who go around raiding other teams’ players.

The same thing happens to professional poker players.

Ladbrokes Poker (www.ladrokes.com), a British online poker room, announced that it has signed Danish poker pro Peter Jepsen to a sponsorship deal.

Jepsen had been a paid spokesman for online poker room Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.com), but in what’s becoming a more common occurence in the world of poker room flacking, he jumped to a better-paying shilling job at Ladrokes.

And instead of being one in a mob of shills, as was the case at Full Tilt Poker, Jepsen will flack solo for Ladrokes–a move he hopes will give him more visibility.

He replaces Danish poker pro Morten Erlandsen as the player representing Ladbrokes Poker in both online and live tournaments. =A0=A0 “I have been with Full Tilt for a year and it has been nothing but great, but of course this deal will profile me more than being a part of Full Tilt’s big armada,” Jepsen said. “And I am delighted to be back with the site where my online career practically started and that has given me a lot of my initial bankroll.

“I hope to be able to score some big live wins next year, but also to continue to be successful online,” he added. “And I look forward to meeting my old friends and competitors, as well as new ones, on Ladbrokes.com. I will challenge a lot of people in the future to come, and I hope they will accept my invites.”

Ladrokes brass bleated mightily about their snatching away of Jepsen.

“It’s a natural way to go for Ladbrokes,” said Richard Funch, Ladbrokes Poker country manager for Denmark. “A new time is here within poker, and Peter is the man of the future.

“We only had one name on our papers when we decided to look for a new Danish player to be our feature player, and we are very glad Peter saw this as a great opportunity as well,” Funch added. “It has cost us a big sack of Christmas money to win Peter over, but I am sure it is well spent as such.”

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)