The World Poker Tour (WPT) is looking to bring tournament poker back to Asia’s gaming hub of Macau, with CEO Adam Pliska stating the company is “very eager to go there”.
In an exclusive interview with Inside Asian Gaming held during the recent WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, Pliska revealed he has plans to visit Macau in early 2024 where the WPT continues to explore avenues to host a major tournament series.
“I continue to look into that,” he said. “We’ve been very eager to go there.”
While a number of Macau’s casinos have opened or reopened poker rooms since border restrictions were eased a year ago – MGM China launched new rooms at both its peninsula and Cotai properties – tournament poker has been sidelined ever since the PokerStars Live room at City of Dreams ceased operations in early 2018.
Among the key issues making large-scale poker events challenging are the Macau SAR’s table cap, which limits the number of gaming tables each concessionaire can operate and therefore encourages those concessionaires to favor higher-yield casino games, as well as the allocation of dealer resources.
Past events have, however, attracted big numbers with the Macau Millions – held at PokerStars Live in April 2018 shortly before the room’s closure – attracting a Main Event field of 2,499 players.
“There are some structural issues in Macau that make it difficult, particularly with dealers, but we are dedicated,” Pliska explained.
“We will get to Macau. We will work with the government and we’ll work with anyone else to make sure we get a good event.”
Pliska added that Asia was becoming an increasingly important region for the WPT, which held events in Taiwan, Cambodia, India and Australia in 2023 and is preparing to host its first ever WPT Cambodia main tour stop at NagaWorld later this month.
“Anybody who’s played any Asian events realizes that the level of enthusiasm is palpable,” Pliska said. “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, it’s massively scalable and I just love those Asian events. I love the enthusiasm there.”
Inside Asian Gaming’s full interview with Pliska will feature in the upcoming February edition of IAG’s monthly magazine.
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