By
Dan |
Published
Jun 24 2009, 09:53 AM
The World Poker Tour (WPT) is back! The schedule for Season VIII of the longtime tournament series was released today. It includes a total of 12 tournaments and a brand new stop in Lawrenceburg, Indiana for the Hollywood Poker Open. The Hollywood Casino will play host to the event and makes its home outside of Cincinnati. The very first tournament on the WPT docket is the Bellagio Cup V, which kicks off on July 13th from the popular Las Vegas casino. The event’s “Shuffle Up and Deal” command will occur just two days prior to the final table of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event being determined before play is put on hold for 100 days, continuing a tradition that began last year.
PocketFivesLive.com Tournament Reporter Court Harrington, who has been covering the WPT since 2006, gave us his thoughts on the brand new tournament schedule: “It's great to see that the WPT is back with the longtime stops that everyone loves like the Bellagio and Foxwoods, but also an event in the Midwest, which will open a tournament up to a new group of players.” In fact, the Hollywood Poker Open will be the first televised WPT event to unfold from Midwestern America and takes place from March 20th to March 24th, the final tournament held before the Championship event at the Bellagio.
Without further adieu, let’s check out the schedule for Season VIII of the WPT:
July 13th to 19th, 2009: Bellagio Cup V
Bellagio (Las Vegas, NV)
$15,400 buy-in
Reigning Champion: Mike SirWatts Watson
August 22nd to 26th, 2009: Legends of Poker
The Bicycle Casino (Los Angeles, CA)
$10,000 buy-in
Reigning Champion: John “The Razor” Phan
September 19th to 24th, 2009: Borgata Poker Open
Borgata Hotel (Atlantic City, NJ)
Buy-In Not Yet Announced
Reigning Champion: Vivek Psyduck Rajkumar
October 20th to 26th, 2009: Festa al Lago
Bellagio (Las Vegas, NV)
$15,400 buy-in
Reigning Champion: Bertrand ElkY Grospellier
November 5th to 10th, 2009: Foxwoods World Poker Finals
Foxwoods Resort Casino (Mashantucket, CT)
$10,000 buy-in
Reigning Champion: Jonathan FieryJustice Little
December 13th to 19th, 2009: Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic
Bellagio (Las Vegas, NV)
$15,400 buy-in
Reigning Champion: David “Chino” Rheem
January 24th to 27th, 2010: Southern Poker Championship
Beau Rivage (Biloxi, MS)
$10,000 buy-in
Reigning Champion: Allen AawwNutz Carter
February 20th to 25th, 2010: L.A. Poker Classic
Commerce Casino (Los Angeles, CA)
$10,000 buy-in
Reigning Champion: Andrew Cimpan
February 27th to March 1st, 2010: WPT Celebrity Invitational
Commerce Casino (Los Angeles, CA)
Invitation-Only Event
March 8th to 12th, 2010: Bay 101 Shooting Star
Bay 101 (San Jose, CA)
$10,000 buy-in
Reigning Champion: Steve Brecher
March 20th to 24th, 2010: Hollywood Poker Open
Hollywood Casino (Lawrenceburg, IN)
$10,000 buy-in
April 17th to 24th, 2010: WPT Championship
Bellagio (Las Vegas, NV)
$25,500 buy-in
Reigning Champion: Yevgeniy atimos Timoshenko
PocketFivers took down six of these events during WPT Season VII, or a commanding 50%. If you’re asking yourself what happened to the North American Poker Championship, which was held at the Fallsview Casino in Canada, it does not appear on the WPT Season VIII schedule. The event brought out the young guns of poker – literally - as the casino’s legal gambling age was only 18. Also absent from the eighth season is the Foxwoods Poker Classic, which took place in April and was won by Vadim Trincher.
Grospellier (pictured at right), a PocketFiver, took down the WPT Season VII Player of the Year, earning an automatic invite into the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which will play out from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas later this year. Grospellier finished with 1,600 Player of the Year points, edging out Phan’s 1,400. Carter, Watson, and Rajkumar each earned 1,000 Player of the Year Points.
Season VIII of the WPT will air in high-definition on Fox Sports Net, which also carried Season VII. If you’ve ever watched the WSOP on ESPN, then you know that a high-definition broadcast adds an exciting dimension to the game. The WPT aired for its first five seasons on The Travel Channel in the United States before a one year stint on GSN.
The Hollywood Poker Open is groundbreaking in several ways. It marks the first WPT event held in the Midwest, which boasts riverboat gambling on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Moreover, the Hollywood Casino will mark the first time that a riverboat has hosted a WPT event. The property, which was formerly Argosy Casino, weighs in at 270,000 square feet.
In the meantime, check out PocketFivesLive.com for the latest WSOP coverage of online poker players.