Alexandre Roos is a French businessman and the CEO and Co-founder of Winamax, a leading poker and sports betting platform in France. With his platform Winamax, Alexandre Roos innovated the online poker world, whether it’s adding new poker formats or operating some of the biggest poker tournaments in the poker world.
Furthermore, the platform has a lot of star power and other people working tirelessly behind the scenes to help Winamax become what it is now, but it may not have reached the position without the vision of Alexandre Roos. Roos not only innovated online poker, but he also played an important role in pioneering the early days of the French internet, with the first local search engine.
Alexandre Roos
Alexandre Roos was born in 1969 in Strasbourg, Alsace. He spent his childhood in Obernai, before graduating from Ecole Centrale Paris with an engineering degree in 1992. After his graduation, he, along with Christophe Schaming and Orianne Garcia, created Lokace in 1994. Lokace was the first-ever French search engine.
Roos, Garcia, and Schaming again collaborated in 1997, and this time provided free emails with “CaraMail” to Lokace users along with other services like Web Messaging, Chat, and Forums, making Lokace the hub of the largest French-speaking user communities.
Creating Winamax
During the early 2000s, due to the internet boom and the historic victory of Chris Moneymaker, online poker platforms saw a surge in popularity. Alexandre Roos didn’t take any long to enter the Online Poker world by launching the first French online poker site – Winamax.
Winamax was initially a sports betting site, but Roos completely repositioned it in the Online poker world after buying it in 2005, and the rest is history. Alexandre Roos wasn’t all alone. He again partnered with his childhood friend Christophe Schaming to build the poker platform. Roos later joined hands with the French poker icon Patrick Bruel to promote the game.
Roos’s platform Winamax was a pioneer in popularizing Expresso Tournaments, a format with ultra-fast three-player Sit & Go tournaments and a lottery-style prize pool multiplier. Several notable platforms like PokerStars and GGPoker later adopted this format. Winamax then continued its dominance in the French online gaming market by introducing sports betting during the Football World Cup 2014, and now is a leader in sports betting in France.
In addition to its online poker room, Winamax also kick-started its Live poker tournaments in 2010. The online poker platform runs two live poker tours: The Winamax Poker Open and Winamax SISMIX. These tournaments have one specialty which makes them stand out from other live tournaments. Both tournaments are played six-handed, making the tour one of the largest six-handed tournaments in the poker world besides WSOP. With his broad vision and innovative ideas, Roos has contributed significantly to the growth of poker in Europe.
Roos emphasizes a community-driven approach, due to which Winamax continues to foster strong connections with poker players through forums and social media and contributes to the growth of poker in Europe. His interactive approach has helped the company to stay responsive to the needs of the players. Despite challenges such as the pandemic, which hampered live events, Roos’ valuable guidance to Winamax enabled it to leverage online poker’s resurgence. It even resulted in notable jumps in player activity during lockdowns.
Alexandre Roos Poker Career
Despite creating one of the biggest poker platforms, Roos doesn’t think he is a good poker player. “I’m a poor player but I like it,” Roos said in an interview. The Winamax CEO hasn’t competed in a lot of poker tournaments, but he plays the game wherever he finds time. According to the Hendon Mob, he competed in the WSOP in 2009 and managed a money finish in the 40th WSOP $10k Main Event for a $23,196 payday, his first and only cash in live poker.
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