Talk around the water cooler has been that the World Series of Poker was considering establishing a WSOP Circuit north of the US border. After an entire month of hushed speculations, the cat is finally out of the bag, and for one Canada poker room, the news couldn’t possibly be better. The WSOPC is coming to River Rock Casino Vancouver.
The story broke at the World Series of Poker when Jason March, the player services manager for BCLC’s online poker room PlayNow Poker, told reporters, “We are so excited, this is going to be a fantastic event. We finalized the deal with the WSOP today.”
The whole country is all a buzz as this marks the first time the WSOP has ventured across the border into Canada. It is, in fact, the first time any major poker series has come to Vancouver.
Before the entire poker playing population of Canada gets their heart-pattern boxer shorts all bunched up with frenzied anticipation, we should point out that no schedules or dates have been set for the premier of WSOP Circuit events in Vancouver. Buy-ins, seats and structures will be announced at a later time.
“We just got final approval today for WSOPC,” said Roberto Luongo, a spokesperson for PlayNow Poker, “so you’ll see a lot more information in the coming weeks.”
What we do know is that the World Series of Poker is planning ten events for the WSOPC, and at least two of them are guaranteed to be held exclusively at the BC Canada online poker room PlayNow.com. In addition, it was formally announced that winners of the online poker circuit events will receive the same official WSOPC rings as those who win the land-based events at Red Rock Casino. No official WSOP event has ever been held entirely online, marking yet another first for the world’s largest poker series.
There is one minor drawback to the arrival of the WSOPC in Canada. Poker aficionados will have to wait a little longer to participate in the British Columbia Poker Championships Main Event. In order to accommodate the new WSOPC stop in Vancouver, the BC Poker Championships will actually skip its normal scheduling in late 2012 and be pushed back to the Spring of 2013.
Vancouver is one of only a limited number of regulated jurisdictions where online poker is legal in North America. As such, a vast number of professional poker players that were displace due to the ominous ‘Black Friday’ fled the United States and landed right here in Canada, many of them in the Vancouver area. Certainly this fact played some part in the decision by the heads of the WSOP to bring circuit events to Canada’s poker community, both online and otherwise.
Since Black Friday, the population of Canadian poker site PlayNow Poker has tripled. The online poker room was responsible for sending 44 of its members to Las Vegas to play in the 2012 WSOP Main Event. The incorporation of the WSOP’s first ever exclusively online poker event is sure to skyrocket PlayNow Poker’s status to one of the top internet gaming sites in the world.