Just a few days ago the World Poker Tour season XVI finished in Vegas with Waxman winning the WPT Tournament of Champions. However, the officials at WPT do not waste time and they immediately announced that the first half of the WPT Season XVII will begin on July 21.
They also stated that by the end of this calendar year, there will be a total of 8 WPT Main Tour stops. All of them are already established, except for one new event which will be held at The Gardens Casino in California. This event will also be the one that will start the season and it will last from July 21-26. The official name for this event will be WPT Gardens Poker Festival Main event and it will take place in a ballroom that has been recently renovated in this venue. It will be considered the first major tournament and the buy-in amount for it will be $5,000.
The next stop of the WPT is Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma where the main event will be held with a $3,500 buy-in. Soon after that, WPT will return to California where WPT 500 Los Angeles will take place in Bicycle Hotel & Casino. It will be held from August 18-27, and the buy-in for this event will be $570. The GTD for the event is $1 million. Before reaching Las Vegas for a year ending tournament called Five Diamond World Poker Classic, WPT also needs to make several more stops and these include Atlantic City, Maryland Live!, Jacksonville’s bestbet, and Seminole Hard Rock. The closing tournament will be held at Bellagio.
Adam Pliska, CEO at WPT stated that the 16th season of WPT had been historic and that they were proud to announce the opening of the 17th season. He also stated that the things that had marked 16th season were the first-time stops that were made in places such as Beijing, Japan, and even South America. Furthermore, they managed to return the WPT Main Tour event broadcast to televisions in Europe and even managed to break ground in some difficult regions in India.
One of the highlights of the previous season include Art Papazyan’s dominance and winning of the WPT Player of the Year. Also, Darren Elias broke the record by winning his fourth title. When it comes to the awards, WPT marked 16th season as the year the sum of their prizes went over a billion. Poker is getting world recognition and some of the areas in the world started accepting it as a sport.
Governments slowly start to realize the potential and the popularity that it has and it can only be predicted that the years ahead of WPT are going to be bright. This is also good news for every poker fan, as the number of players, events, and tournaments is likely to increase all over the world. This also means that the money in poker will be greater than ever!