Phil Ivey and Jean-Robert Bellande are among the heavy hitters who will be playing in the upcoming WPT Spring Festival online tournament, which takes place on the Poker King poker site.
The tournament begins February 17 with Day 1A, followed by Days 1B and 1C the proceeding two days. Play runs until the conclusion of the final table on February 22, and will be live-streamed on a 30-minute delay on the WPT.com website in four languages (English, Chinese, Hindi, and Vietnamese).
The buy-in for the tournament is RMB 2,000, which equates to $309 USD. While that may seem like a small buy-in for a WPT event, the RMB 10 million prize pool ($1,548,419 USD) is quite large for an online poker tournament, especially on a site that is fairly new.
Poker King is becoming a popular place to play poker in Asia, where pros such as Phil Ivey and Tom "durrrr" Dwan regularly play and live. The site has partnered with these two poker legends, and has gained some attention around the poker community for doing so.
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Partnering with the World Poker Tour, one of the top brands in the game, on the upcoming Spring Festival, will help the poker site's marketing efforts even further. Bellande, a 2019 WSOP bracelet winner and high-stakes regular in Las Vegas, announced on Twitter in a brief video that he will be competing in the tournament.
"I'll be playing alongside Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and some other big names," Jean-Robert Bellande informed his Twitter followers in the video. "So, the Main Event has a 10 million RMB guarantee but the buy-in is only 2,000 RMB and you can actually satellite in for as little as 10 RMB."
Bellande also announced there's a bounty on his back during the tournament. If you knock him out of the tournament, you'll receive a 1,500 RMB bounty.
The Poker King Spring Festival series kicks off February 11 on the poker site. The Main Event, the WPT Spring Festival, begins six days later. Ivey also announced his intention to play on social media.
"Join me, Tom Dwan, JRB, and a lot of the WPT crew that's going to be playing also," Ivey said in the video.
Ivey, like JRB, will have a 1,500 RMB bounty on his back for anyone who knocks him out of the tournament. The Poker Hall of Famer has been promoting Poker King the past few months. He recently sat down with his pal and fellow poker star Barry Greenstein on the Poker King YouTube channel to discuss his poker career and what he's up to these days.
On top of the poker stars competing in the WPT Spring Festival, comedian and streamer Andy Milonakis, a poker enthusiast, also announced he'll be among those chasing their share of the $1.5 million prize pool.
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