Home / Poker News January 2010 / WPT set to expand into Eastern Europe
WPT set to expand into Eastern Europe
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2010-01-01 10:12
The recent success of the
EPT in Eastern Europe has certainly drawn a lot of attention to the region. EPT events in the Ukraine, Hungary and Poland all drew great starting fields and generated awesome prize-pools. It is apparently now Romania’s turn to join the live international poker circuit, via the WPT this time.
Under new management, the WPT is apparently wasting no time in exploring pristine territory and reclaiming the old turf.
The Paris event, hosted by the famous Aviation Club de France will also return in May this year, and a Romanian stop will be added as well.
The Romanian WPT event will be hosted in the center of Bucharest (Romania’s capitol) in the Regent Casino in the Novotel Hotel. The venue is a complete one, with a large gaming area, a luxury restaurant, VIP rooms and various casino games available too.
The WPT’s Romanian stop will take place between March 27th and April 2nd 2010 and it will feature a poker tournament with a €3,000+€300 buy-in, which will act as the Main Event. PartyGaming, the
online poker and gambling company which is the main sponsor of the series and mother company to
PartyPoker, will feature plenty of qualifying opportunities for this event, but if you fail to secure your seat online, you’ll still be able to grab one in the live qualifiers run at the above described location. Direct buy-in is always an option too, especially for those generously bankrolled.
Upon purchasing the WPT in the latter part of last year, PartyGaming promised to turn the tour into a European focused one, by adding new locations and by reclaiming old ones. The Romanian move seems to be a clear shift in this direction.
What special poker-related trivia is there about Romania? Well, not much except the fact that this is the country Daniel Negreanu hails from. While the PokerStars pro was born in Canada, his parents had emigrated from Romania in 1967, during a time when the communist regime there began to grow more and more restrictive of personal freedom. Whether or not Negreanu will attend the Romanian stop remains to be seen, although given his links to the region he’s likely to. His presence will definitely add to the prestige of the event, something that the WPT is probably counting on.
