WPT Announces First Ever European Championship Event in Berlin

The World Poker Tour (WPT) will be visiting Berlin, Germany for the first time and will host season XVI European Championship between Jan. 5 and 15, 2018. The event will take place at the Spielbank Casino.

This is the first stop announced for the Season XVI schedule in 2017 and marks the return of a European Main Event to television.

In a statement Adam Pliska, CEO of the World Poker Tour said,

Much has changed since the WPT’s last televised European event in Season XII, but one thing that has remained certain is Europe’s incredible enthusiasm for poker. The continent is home to some of the world’s most talented poker players, including several WPT Champions Club members. We look forward to hosting the entire poker world in Berlin for the televised WPT European Championship

The last aired television episode of a European-based Main Event by the WPT was that of the €7,500 Grand Prix de Paris held at the now-shuttered Aviation Club in Paris. Mohsin Charania had bested around 187 players to grab the first spot and take home a prize of €340,000 which is around $449,856.

World Poker Tour

The Berlin festival will start with a €1,500 WPT DeepStacks event that has a guarantee of €500,000 and will be held between January 5 and 8. The final table of the event will be live streamed across the world. The Main Event will take place later between Jan 10 to 15 and will have a buy-in of €3,300 and a guaranteed prize pool of €1,000,000. The Main Event will be live streamed and also be filmed for television broadcast.

Marcel Langner, Director of Operations for Spielbank Casino expressed his delight at the partnership with the World Poker Tour and said that it was an honor to welcome WPT to Germany. He added that the festival offered the opportunity to promote the game of poker and create more poker players and fans in the region.

The Spielbank Casino has a gaming floor spread across 118,403 square feet featuring an eight-table poker room, around 350 gaming machines and close to a dozen table games. The casino has previously played host the World Series of Poker Europe which was held in October 2015. The full WPT European Championship schedule is expected to be released later.

Season XVI of the WPT kicked off in April 2017 with the WPT Beijing tournament, which was also a first. The WPT Main Tour then reached the Netherlands to host the WPT Amsterdam tournament in early May.