Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa continued to solidify its partnership with the World Poker Tour as it hosted the million guaranteed WPT Championship last week.
The WPT championship had been held in Las Vegas for the last 11 years.
The event was sponsored by party.poker, Borgata’s online gambling partner in New Jersey. The World Poker Tour is owned by bwin.party, which also owns Party.Poker.com.
WPT officials have said they made the move to highlight New Jersey’s online gambling offerings and to take advantage of the buzz online gambling has brought to Atlantic City.
The partnership has brought back a definite online feel to a large live poker tournament.
Borgata and party.poker gave 10 players seats to the WPT Championship through online satellites and another 30 qualified for tournaments at the Borgata Spring Poker Open, which is running concurrently with the WPT Championship.
The championship also offered its first prize pool guarantee. The winner was guaranteed about $1.3 million from a guaranteed $5 million prize pool.
Last year’s WPT Championship—with a $25,000 buy-in—attracted its smallest field ever with 146 entries, including satellite winners.
This year’s championship—at an easier to handle $15,000 buy-in—attracted 328 entries. While that falls short of the $5 million guarantee—especially considering that satellite winners did not pay the buy-in—the larger field still attracted some of the biggest names in professional poker including Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen and Tony Dunst, to name just a few.
Televised highlights will be broadcast nationally next month.
