The newest season of WPT® Korea was “bigger and better” compared to previous seasons, which means that its total of twenty-eight events managed to collect a combined prize pools of KRW7.63 bln, which is approximately US$5.6m, and to lure an overall of 4,146 players from a total of thirty-three countries, according to the World Poker Tour (WPT).

Description of WPT® Korea:

After the last triumph in South Korea in July of the previous year, the newest WPT® Korea took place at Landing Casino, Jeju Shinhwa World. Additionally, it officially started on March 25 and lasted till April 3, meaning that it lasted ten days in total.

The tournament boasted a prize pool of KR₩2bln, which is roughly US$1.5m, and the price of buy-in was KR₩ 2.8m, which is approximately US$2,000.

The first event to mark the beginning of the tournament took place on March 25th and was titled the Super High Roller, with a buy-in price of KR₩40m, which is roughly US$30,000. As for the last event that marked the conclusion of the entire WPT® Korea that took place on April 2, it was one more High Roller event, for which the buy-in price was KR₩ 20 million, which is approximately US$15,000.

The main event attracted a large number of entries:

The main event was a record breaker as it had a prize pool of nearly US$2m and managed to lure 1,065 participants. However, it was eventually won by Mate Hanusi, originally from Hungary, for KRW434.9m, which is roughly US$321,700.

Furthermore, according to Inside Asian Gaming, WPT® Korea represents one of the six events reported for the Asia-Pacific region so far. It also represents one of the two “special events” together with the WPT Vietnam Passport to the World Championship scheduled to be held in Hanoi in May 2024.

On a related note, there are 3 primary WPT tour stops for this year. The first one is WPT Cambodia, which has already been held during January. Tthe second is WPT Macau which should be held in June, and the final one is WPT Australia which should be held during September. In addition, WPT Prime Gold Coast is also scheduled to begin later in April.

In a December interview with Inside Asian Gaming, Adam Pliska, CEO of WPT, commented: “Anybody who’s played any Asian events realizes that the level of enthusiasm is palpable. I mean, you have events where it can be the morning of Day 1 and people are seated at the table ready to go and eager, and I think it’s because Asia continues to be in its boom. There is so much poker education and so much great technology out there, and Asia has just run with it. You have great opportunities as individual countries have opened up. For a long time, if you think about it, the majority of the large events were not only Western events, they were US-centric events, so to open to a large population who gets it – and now with online poker which is such a major component – it’s massively scalable and I just love those Asian events. I love the enthusiasm there.”

World Poker Tour intends to hold the next promotion on a cruise ship:

In other news, during July last year, WPT announced that it will be hosting a “WPT Voyage 2024” promotion on the cruise ship, making stops around the Caribbean.