The World Poker Tour (WPT) continues to make good on its name, as it recently announced that new tour stop will be held in Taiwan this summer. This is the first time the World Poker Tour will land in Taiwan, as it partners with the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Association in Taipei City. WPT Taiwan will take place July 12th through July 22nd.
“Taiwan is a great country, and people here are filled with passion, with lots of shopping and fine dining places, along with amazing poker,” said David Tai, the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Association’s CEO. “Streets here are clean and safe, with heightened security. All of these attractions make Taiwan one of the hottest travelling spots in the world!”
I’m not so sure how I feel about the highlight of the sales pitch being how safe the country is and how it has increased security, but safety and security are certainly good things.
The WPT Taiwan Main Event will run July 17th through July 21st and will have a buy-in of TWD 30,000, which is about USD $973. Tournaments during the entire festival will have buy-ins spanning TWD 4,000 to TWD 55,000.
“Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Association is an exciting venue and the World Poker Tour looks forward to partnering with their fantastic team,” said Angelica Hael, VP of Global Tour Management for the World Poker Tour, in a press release. “The WPT continues to expand into the Asia-Pacific and WPT Taiwan will be another spectacular event to highlight the best the region has to offer.”
Taiwan has been getting on the poker map in recent months. In November of last year, the Asian Poker Tour announced that was expanding into both Taiwan and Japan. APT Taiwan was held February 20th through March 3rd, also at the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Association’s facility in Taipei. The Association actually has eight clubs in the country, but the one in Taipei is the largest, with more than 25 poker tables. The poker room also offers RFID tables for live-streaming (RFID is as way cards can be automatically read to provide hand graphics on the stream), a rarity in Asian poker rooms.
In addition to its regular poker games, the Chinese Texas Hold’em Poker Association club in Taipei City has already hosted a number of poker festivals this year, though nothing really on par with the Asian Poker Tour or World Poker Tour. By my count, including the Asian Poker Tour stop, there have been eight festivals at the venue in 2019, with loads more last year. The latest was the Hong Kong Poker Players Association Premier League Taiwan.
The Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) has not expanded to Taiwan this year, with only stops in Incheon, Korea and Manila, Philippines scheduled.
