The Winamax Poker Tour (WiPT) is set to resume its live event offerings after enduring a hiatus now entering its third year. In a Thursday announcement, the France-based site revealed its tentative plans for live 2022 events in Spain, Slovakia, and Ireland.
The planned events are the first for the Winamax Poker Tour since a four-stop 2020 slate was wiped away by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of the three stops returns to locales that Winamax had planned for 2020.
According to Winamax's Benjo Dimeo, the first Winamax Poker Tour stop of 2022 will occur in Madrid and is scheduled to run May 7-15. Back in March of 2020, Madrid was to host the live finale of the 2019 Winamax tour, which had several stops in Spain, but the coronavirus forced it to be cancelled just days prior to its start. The new 2022 stop is thus a reunion of sorts, being held at Madrid's Grand Madrid Torrelodones Casino. Winamax has revealed that the stop will include a €500 6-max Main Event with multiple opening days, but the company is withholding other details.
Next up is a tour stop scheduled for the autumn in Bratislava, Slovakia. Slated to run September 26 - October 2, 2022, the stop replaces possible returns to Lloret de Mar, Spain or Marrakesh, Morocco, which had hosted earlier WiPT stops. Besides revealing that the series will be held at a Crowne Plaza hotel adjacent to the Danube River, which bisects Bratislava, no other details have been release.
The third Winamax Poker Tour stop in the works for 2020 is a late-year return to its origins as a live stop, in Dublin, Ireland. A hoped-for 11th edition of the Winamax Poker Open is tentatively penciled in for late November or early December. "We will do it," wrote Dimeo, "if the health situation allows it again in Ireland."
Winamax Club Trophy to be decided in April
There's one other live event being planned by Winamax in 2022, and it will occur before any of the WiPT stops. Winamax also announced that its annual gathering of local club champions, will be held in April. Winamax continues to partner with local poker organizations in France, and members of 113 clubs are eligible to play for the Club Trophy, normally awarded annually but offered here for the first time since 2019. The gathering will be held April 2-3, 2022 at Disneyland Paris.
Winamax's 2022 revival of its live-poker offerings resumes a history more than a decade in the making. Though based in France, the company's first major live-event foray was the 2010 Winamax Poker Open, which was held in Ireland. The true Winamax Poker Tour launched in late 2011 in France, where it ran successfully for several years.
Changes in France's gambling laws regarding live poker events forced Winamax to move the WiPT completely online in 2018, while live events were held outside of France, most frequently in Spain. That setup remained in place until the COVID-induced 2020 cancellations.
Featured image source: winamax.fr
