Just three weeks before it was set to begin, WPT Macau has been canceled. In a short statement posted on X (formerly Twitter), the World Poker Tour said, in part, “WPT, Wynn Macau, and Allied Gaming and Entertainment regret any inconvenience or disappointment for players from around the world who were planning to travel to Macau and play in the event.”
“WPT remains committed to working with Wynn Macau and AGAE in the future to bring world class poker tournaments back to the region,” the Tour added.
The WPT did not provide any reason for the last-minute cancellation. The highly-anticipated series in Asia’s gambling hub was just announced in April.
Despite Macau’s reputation as a high stakes poker hot spot, there had been no tournament poker from 2018 until this past March, as China was cracking down on online poker. Macau is a special administrative unit that has been under Chinese control since 1999. That drought was broken by The Venetian Macao, which hosted the four-day Macau Masters, after the Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau gave the event official approval.
The World Poker Tour has had two successful stops in Asia this year: WPT Cambodia and WPT Korea. WPT Macau, though, is now the second straight Asia WPT stop that has been called off.
Earlier this month, the “WPT Vietnam 2024 – Passport to the World Championship” was nixed. The setback was unexpected; Dua Tin, a Hanoi media outlet, published an article saying that the event had not been authorized by the Department of Culture and Sports. In that article, government officials confirmed that the Crown Poker Club had not, in fact, collected the required approvals.
The cancelation came only days before the WPT Vietnam event was to start. The World Poker Tour said it was refunding buy-ins, but many players had already shelled out for travel and it seems that they were still on the hook for those expenses.
The World Poker Tour does have some events that will directly compete with the 2024 World Series of Poker, which started yesterday. The $25,000 WPT Alpha8 Trifecta events will all be held at Wynn Las Vegas on June 25, July 3 (the day the WSOP Main Event begins), and July 10.
The next WPT Main Tour stop in the United States is the WPT bestbet Scramble in November.
