The World Series of Poker (WSOP) has finally released the list of international stops for its 2016-17 Circuit season along with confirmed dates.
This year the schedule has a number of new stops at Australia, Portugal and Belgium in addition to the established venues of Italy, France and Morocco.
In a statement, Gregory Chochon WSOP Director said
We are very pleased to add these additional stops to the WSOP Circuit. We have been very judicious on which locales and casinos we will work with and believe we have found terrific partners in each of these markets to help bring the WSOP brand to a local and regional audience.
The initial announcement by WSOP on the scheduled international stops for this year’s circuit had outlined a total of 14 stops but only six were released. Brazil was added shortly after, a stop that was tremendously successful with over 2,800 entries making it the largest WSOP-branded event outside the U.S.
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In its latest update, WSOP announced six more stops, bringing the total to 13 and leaving one still pending. The WSOP has said that if all goes as expected, then the 14th stop would also be announced.
One of the major changes seen in the domestic circuit is that the original venue Bally’s Casino in Las Vegas has been replaced with Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. The WSOP said the change was due to scheduling conflicts and confirmed that the Rio will host the event between Feb. 16 and Feb. 27.
The fresh additions to the WSOPC are the Star Sydney in Australia between Nov 22 to Dec. 12, 2016, the Casino de Marrakech in Morocco between Jan. 14-22, 2017; the Casino Campione in Italy between March 6-20; the Casino Barriere Cannes Le Croisette in France between April 17-24; the Casino Estorilin Portugal between May 1-7 and finally the Grand Casino Brussels Viage in Belgium between May 19-28.
The WSOP has already completed a number of international stops in Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Brazil and the Caribbean Island of St Maarten in 2016. The WSOP has announced that similar to the domestic track, the international round of events will also hold two qualifiers at each stop for the season-ending event which is the WSOP Global Casino Championship.
Every Main Event winner as well as the Casino Champion will be awarded an automatic entry to the event. The International and Domestic circuits merge for the culminating event of Global Casino Championship which is to be held in the summer of 2017.
