The World Poker Tour has been celebrating its 20th anniversary all year. Its first year under new ownership provided opportunities to make changes and try new things. The WPT signed a group of ambassadors, turned WPTDeepStacks into WPT Prime, and launched the WPT Global online poker site.
As for the main tour schedule, though, it hasn’t been as full in early 2022 as in pre-pandemic years. That is changing for the second half of the year, though. There are some tour stops and then there are some massive tour stops.
Returning to Familiar Places
The World Poker Tour decided to rekindle some old relationships this year.
One relationship will bring the main tour back to the Bicycle Casino in the greater Los Angeles area of Southern California. Under its own new overseers, the Bike is now officially Parkwest Bicycle Casino, and it will host the Legends of Poker tournament series. The pandemic put an unplanned pause in the WPT Legends mix.
The entire Legends of Poker festival is already underway, having started on July 25. It will run through September 1, but the WPT will come in for WPT Week from August 22 through September 1. During that time, the involvement of the WPT is unclear except for the WPT Legends Main Event. That will be a $5K buy-in tournament with three starting days (August 27-29) and a final table on the first day of September that will be livestreamed.
https://twitter.com/tonydunsttv/status/1556719544818733057?s=20&t=V2Gz-QYtywJppg1MFt5WbA
The second relationship puts the WPT back with the Bellagio in Las Vegas for the Five Diamond World Poker Classic. The long-running series had always run in late November or sometime in December, but this year, it will be in October.
The WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic will host an entire festival from October 7-23, but the WPT Main Event will play out October 19-23. The buy-in will be one of the highest of the season at $10K, and the prize pool will guarantee to pay at least $5M. And in a throwback to old times, there will be only one starting flight.
WPT and Wynn Partner for Finale
It was a big announcement in early June that had everyone talking. The World Poker Tour announced that it would hold its season-ending WPT World Championship at the Wynn Las Vegas. The entire series, in fact, will be the WPT World Championship, to run December 1-20.
Most surprisingly, the Main Event will be a $10K buy-in with a massive $15M guarantee. And the three starting flights will allow only one entry per flight, minimizing the usual number of reentries available. WPT CEO Adam Pliska called it one of the “most ambitious initiatives the World Poker Tour has undertaken in our 20-year history.” Part of the initiative will be to bring in at least 200 online qualifiers.
https://twitter.com/WPT/status/1533841249593171968?s=20&t=V2Gz-QYtywJppg1MFt5WbA
A subsequent announcement from the WPT revealed that the entire December series will offer 23 events and guarantee $22M in total. It will include HORSE and 8-Game Mix events, as well as an Omaha-8 and Tag Team Bomb Pot Double Barrel event. There will also be a Mystery Bounty tournament.
The WPT also announced that it will host the WPT Ladies World Championship as a part of this series. It will require a $1K buy-in and guarantee $200K. The December 16-18 event will also be qualifying players online and through pre-event satellites. The action will also be filmed, one of only three events to be filmed for later television broadcasts.
https://twitter.com/WynnPoker/status/1557780948820692993?s=20&t=V2Gz-QYtywJppg1MFt5WbA
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