The World Poker Tour (WPT) is one of the most popular poker tournaments in international poker and their World Poker Tour Championship was considered to be one of their flagship events that usually took place at the end of the season.
The World Poker Tour Championship used to have a buy-in at $25,000 and was successful in attracting poker players from all over the country as the guaranteed prize pool and individual payouts were always at a very high level. Poker player Carlos Mortensen once went on to beat 639 players and take home as much as $3,970,415 in prize money.
The WPT recently announced that it planned to drop the World Poker Tour Championship and replace it with a new event which will be known as the Tournament Of Champions and will take place at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. This special event will be open to only main event winners of Season XIV and they will be automatically registered for this event. The WPT “Champions Club” members which consist of main event winners from previous seasons will also have a chance to take part in this event and will have to pay $15,400 as a buy-in. While there hasn’t been any indication as to the amount of prize money involved, the tournament is expected to draw some of the biggest names in the poker industry and have large payouts.
In a statement, Adam Pliska, WPT President and CEO said
By combining Season XIV winners and WPT Champions Club members, the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions will truly be a championship event. We will promote the ‘champion of champions’ to our millions of television viewers and to the thousands of players in the community for seasons to come, solidifying the winner’s place in the World Poker Tour’s rich history.
The WPT also released more information about the tournaments scheduled in Season XIV. Some of those events include the WPT National Philippines which will take place during 4th – 8th Jan 2016 at the Solaire Resort & Casino in Manila, Philippines; the WPTDeepStacks Hustler which will take place during the 8th – 11th of Jan at the Hustler Casino Gardena in California; the WPT Fallsview Poker Classic which will take place during the 21st – 24th Feb at the Fallsview Casino Resort in Ontario, Canada; and the bwin.be WPT National Brussels which will take place during the 25th – 28th of Feb in Viage, Belgium.
