The World Poker Tour (WPT) announced on Tuesday that it is taking WPTDeepStacks events to the Spanish and French iterations of partypoker for the first time. The festivities begin this coming weekend on April 5th and will run through April 20th.
“WPTDeepStacks and partypoker are bringing wonderful new tournaments for online players in France and Spain,” said the World Poker Tour’s VP Europe Hermance Blum. “The online partnership between WPT® and partypoker continues to grow, and these events are the latest step in giving players the option to play on the World Poker Tour® from home.”
Spain’s a little smaller than France’s
According to the press release issued by the World Poker Tour, the parallel tournament series on partypoker.fr and partypoker.es will be very similar, but not quite identical. The Spanish series will have 44 events, while the French version will have 47. And perhaps because of that, the total guaranteed prize pools on the French side will be a bit greater, €2.8 million versus €2.5 million.
Spanish players will have buy-ins ranging from €2 to €250, while French players will see their highest buy-ins go all the way up to €2,000.
The partypoker website right now only seems to list the schedule for the Spanish version of WPTDeepStacks online, as the tournaments only go up to #44. Each tournament has three different buy-in levels, something internet poker players should be very familiar with by now.
The Spanish Main Event has buy-ins of €5, €50, and €250 and guarantees of €20,000, €200,000, and €500,000, respectively.
French has High Roller, Last Longer Promo
It appears that the higher range of buy-ins on the French side come from a High Roller event with buy-in tiers of €500, €1,000, and €2,000. All three tournaments have a €100,000 guarantee.
The French series also features a Last Longer promotion. The players who win the “side events,” that is, the tournaments that are not the Main Event, will be put into this last longer contest. The three players that last the longest in each of the Main Events (one from each buy-in tier) will win a seat worth up to €1,500 in a future WPTDeepStacks Main Event live tournament.
partypoker loading up with events will people are at home
Partypoker seems to be the hub for live events that are being taken online during the coronavirus pandemic. April will see the Poker Masters, originally scheduled for October at the Aria in Las Vegas, has become the Poker Masters Online Series, running April 12th through April 26th.
As October is still a ways out, it is entirely possible that this isn’t a substitute for the original, but an additional tournament series to give poker players some options while sheltering at home.
The 2020 Irish Open was postponed, so it could still be rescheduled when casinos open back up, but for now, partypoker is hosting the Irish Open Online Festival from April 6th through April 12th.
In May, partypoker’s relationship with the World Poker Tour continues with the WPT Online Series. It will feature WPTDeepStacks and WPT500 tournaments, but the bulk of it is an honest-to-goodness WPT tour stop, just online. The winner of the WPT Online Championship will receive a seat in the WPT Tournament of Champions, just like the winner of any regular WPT tour stop.