After a chance to relax with friends and family for the holidays, poker players from around the world are taking to the roads and skies this week as the first major live poker tournaments of 2012 get underway. The big boys – World Poker Tour, European Poker Tour, and World Series of Poker (Circuit, of course) – are all in action this first week of the year.
The World Poker Tour (WPT) kicks off 2012 tomorrow with WPT Ireland. Hosted by the Citywest Hotel, Conference, Leisure, and Gold Resort in Dublin, the €2,500 Main Event is scheduled to run four days, ending with the televised final table on Sunday, January 8th. This is the first time the World Poker Tour will make a stop in the Emerald Isle.
Running concurrently with the Main Event will be the Irish Poker Championship as well as a handful of lower buy-in, single day tournaments. The Irish Poker Championship (€675 + €75) will begin on Friday and will run through the weekend. Satellites are currently running for WPT Ireland, while the Irish Poker Championship will have its own qualifiers right up until start time.
The European Poker Tour’s (EPT) most popular stop, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), also begins Thursday with its most expensive tournament, the $98,500 + $1,500 Super High Roller 8-Max Re-entry event, scheduled as a three day televised event. The $10,000 + $300 Main Event will see its first hand dealt on Saturday, January 7th with the first of two Day 1 flights and will conclude next Friday, January 13th (Friday the 13th – expect lots of bad beats?) with the televised and webcast final table.
There are over 30 additional open events on the docket at the PCA over the next week and half, including what is to some the most anticipated tournament, the PCA Battleship Main Event. This event is a heads-up tournament played online, but in person, with competitors playing on laptops right in front of each other. The monitors of the laptops are placed back to back with the players facing each other, reminiscent of what it looks like when people play each other in the popular “Battleship” family game.
As usual, the PCA will take place at the incredible Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) Circuit stop at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California is actually already underway, as tournaments started up on New Year’s Day. All told, there will be a dozen official WSOP Circuit ring events at The Bike through January 12th with many more smaller buy-in non-ring events on the schedule, as well. The $1,600 Main Event is the tenth of the twelve ring events, starting on Tuesday, January 10th and featuring three days of play (with two Day 1 flights). The Main Event is a re-entry tournament, as players eliminated on Day 1A can jump back in on Day 1B, provided they pony up another buy-in.
