WPT and EPT Legs Underline Poker’s Love Affair with Paris
The World Poker Tour (WPT) will begin its 21st season in January. Paris is the first stop on the 2023 tour. It is one of 12 events listed on a first-half-year schedule that spans the globe and features legs in three hemispheres.
Paris was a city on the roster of the very first World Poker Tour in February 2003. It played host to the world’s finest players again that summer – as the curtain-raising event of WPT season two. 12 months later, 205 entries paid the €10,000 entry fee to play the event in the Aviation Club. It was won by England’s Surinder Sunar ahead of Lithuanian Tony Guoga.
Surinder Sunar shakes the hands of friends and supporters ahead of his showdown with Lithuanian Tony Guoga at the 2004 WPT final table in Paris. @GettyImages
The Aviation – which closed in 2014 – was an original ‘charter member’ of the World Poker Tour. Situated on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, the venue was a stone’s throw from the iconic Arc de Triomphe and a favorite with high-stakes players.
Beyond the long list of poker careers the Aviation Club launched – and its huge cash-game action – the venue will be forever remembered as the scene of a botched armed robbery in 2004 during the World Poker Tour festival.
Touring from France to the Land Down-under
This year, the WPT Prime Paris will take place in the Club Circus Paris. The main event begins on January 31 and concludes on February 5. In date order, the next WPT legs are Australia Gold Coast (March 2-6, Star Gold Coast, Queensland), Cambodia (March 16-20, Naga World Integrated Resort, Phnom Penh), and Netherlands (March 29-April 1) at the striking Holland Casino Amsterdam.
The first trip of the year to America follows with Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, California, staging its WPT Main Event (between April 1-4). Goa, India, (April 13-17) at Deltin Royale Casino comes next. The WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown in Hollywood, Florida, begins 11 days after the Indian event concludes.
May is a busy month with four WPT competitions. Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma, stages the first. Its four-day Main Event will start on May 5. The Card Casino Bratislava in Slovakia has been given May 11-15 dates.
The WPT Gardens Poker Championship at Gardens Casino in Hawaiian Gardens, California, starts on May 21 and finishes on the day the WPT Prime Vietnam begins at Crown Poker Club in Hanoi, Vietnam – May 25.
Finally, the WPT Prime Sanremo at Casino di Sanremo in Italy completes the schedule for the first half of 2023. Its main event runs between June 7 and June 11.
New Ground for WPT
Meanwhile, the European Poker Tour (EPT) will also begin its journey in Paris. 2015 was the last time the PokerStars backed tour visited France. And an EPT has never been staged in the country’s capital.
February 15-26 is the date set aside for the festival that will take place within Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile. Entry fees range between €1,100 and €50,000. There are three €25,000 buy-in tournaments, albeit the main event – beginning on February 20 – requires €5,300 to play.
All other EPT events are similarly costly to play. The competition dates are Monte Carlo (April 26-May 6), Barcelona (August 21-September 3), Cyprus (October 11-22) and Prague (December 6-17).
