Holding, bluffing and folding are going increasingly online, says the Irvine-based World Poker Tour, which has been adapting to bans on large gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.
Many live events have been removed from WPT’s schedule this season, but the company is rebounding through online poker on its social gaming platform ClubWPT and online gaming room partner partypoker, along with its global TV show.
More Players
“We are seeing already a meaningful uptick,” WPT Chief Executive and President Adam Pliska told the Business Journal. “We’re consistently seeing more and more people go online and playing on the online and social gaming poker. Now with more people inside we are getting a lot more people who are coming on to the site.”
The World Poker Tour is the sister company of online gaming company Allied Esports, and both are grouped under the Allied Esports Entertainment Inc. (NASDAQ: AESE) banner. Both are based in Irvine.
“We don’t do real-money gaming in most of the U.S.,” Pliska said. However, the company does offer its popular ClubWPT sweepstakes-based poker site.
The setting is familiar, with six to nine people sitting around a poker table, using a special online platform.
Online Avatar
“Online you will be an avatar, you will sit there. When you go on you have the option to do exactly the same things that you would do. You can call, you can raise, you’re watching multiple people,” Pliska said. “What we can do is as much as possible, take the WPT experience and make it virtual.”
Pliska said normally the company has 65 live events around the world, but they all have been canceled.
“We’ve announced that in May we are launching a true series of real-money gaming online on the partypoker platform. Now you need to be in a country where that is legal, for example in Europe. It’s not legal in the U.S.,” Pliska said in the interview last month.
Online, TV
The WPT postponed its televised final tables that had been set to tape between March 31 and April 2 at HyperX Esports Arena Las Vegas. They have tentatively been set to take place next month.
The company is also introducing its first WPT Online Series on partypoker in May. Furthermore, the WPT has increased the number and size of events and promotions on ClubWPT.
ClubWPT has been the sweepstakes online poker home for WPT since 2008. Users pay a monthly fee and can win $100,000 in cash and prizes every month.
Pliska estimates 100 million people globally watch the WPT TV show on various platforms.
