Poker: The WPT’s 20th Anniversary Tour Begins This Week in Florida
The World Poker Tour will celebrate its 20th birthday in May of this year. Since its inception, the organization, which played a major part in igniting the global poker boom with the creation of a unique television show based on a series of high-stakes poker tournaments, has produced around 300 main event winners.
Carlos Mortensen has won three WPT titles netting $5.3 million in total. ©GettyImages
Carlos Mortensen, the 2001 World Series of Poker Main Event champion, has the distinction of being the biggest World Poker Tour (WPT) winner in history. The Ecuadorian collected $3,970,415 when landing 2007s World Poker Tour Championship at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
The WPT has also generated fortunes for its operators. It has had four owners to date and was most recently sold for $105 million in July 2021.
Not Always a Walk in the Park
Not everything the WPT has touched has turned to gold. A spin-off Professional Poker Tour lasted just one year. The high-roller WPT Alpha8 was canceled after three series.
A WPT Walk of Fame at California’s Commerce Casino was discontinued after just two years and a WPT Honors Award was only presented in 2017 and 2018.
Additionally, some of the WPT’s main event winners proceeded to have a checkered future. Last summer, Dennis Blieden was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail for embezzling more than $22 million from his employers.
Howard Lederer avoided jail but for his part in a $500 million poker Ponzi scheme, but his reputation was tarnished forever. He has now seemingly retired from poker.
The Tour Continues
But these are rare reversals in fortune. Longevity underlines the WPT has been an outstanding success and the organization has consistently found venues – and global broadcasting platforms – for its flag-bearing Main Tour events. Entry fees for these range between $3,500 and $25,000.
Next week the WPT’s 20th-anniversary tour gets underway at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. And the WPT is not running scared of Covid-19 – something that stopped the tour for ten months in 2020. This $3,500 buy-in No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournament features a $2 million guaranteed prize pool.
The five-day Main Tour competition is part of a bigger festival that begins on January 13th. The main event will start on January 21st with two starting days. They will feature unlimited re-entries until the beginning of level nine for both days.
Nevertheless, 572 individual entries are needed for organizers to reach the enormous guarantee placed on this competition that is officially titled the Lucky Hearts Poker Open. Understanding the corresponding event in 2021 attracted 1,573 entries – making it the third-largest WPT Main Tour event in history – officials may not be too concerned.
Let’s Get the Party Started
Traditionally PartyPoker, one of the world’s leading poker sites, hosts online WPT events and runs satellites to land-based tournaments. But PartyCasino’s sister site also caters for smaller pockets and players based in the UK.
Cleverly amalgamating live and online play, the first of 2022s PartyPoker Grand Prix Tour events also begins this month. Hosted at Dusk Till Dawn card room in Nottingham, the first Grand Prix UK event will run between January 16th and 23rd.
Costing £150 to enter and offering a £100,000 guarantee, this competition features four online day-1s (on January 16th and 18th) and an additional three live day-1s at the host venue. All players that successfully navigate their way to the end of day-1 will then converge on Dusk Till Dawn for a live final on Sunday 23rd January.
