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PTWPT Forced To Cancel WPT Maryland Live Due To COVID-19 Outbreak
The World Poker Tour (WPT) was pretty confident that it would be able to pull off its WPT Maryland Live poker tour which was scheduled to take place from Sep 15 to 28 at the Live! Poker Room. Most poker rooms across the U.S. were back in business and the WPT was keen on proceeding with its live poker tour.
However with an uptick of COVID-19 cases in different states, casino operators are once again under pressure to put restrictions in place. The WPT announced this week that it has decided to cancel its WPT Maryland Live poker tour due to the growing number of cases in Maryland.
This is not the first live poker festival that the WPT has had to cancel recently as the WPT also had to cancel its stop at Jacksonville, Florida for similar reasons. Live! Poker Room has announced the cancellation of this poker stop on its website and asked players to keep checking back to see if it will be rescheduled at a later date.
Poker players in Maryland were eager to get back to the live poker tables. WPT Maryland Live promised a total of 16 tournaments with affordable buy-ins starting at $150 and going up to $1,600. The highlight of the live poker festival was to be the Main Event which had a $3,500 buy-in and a guaranteed prize pool of $1.5 million.
The daily rate for positive COVID-19 tests in Maryland averaged around 100 during July but that number has now skyrocketed to 1,000 plus positive tests per day in August.
Live! Poker Room Remains Open
One strange aspect of all of this is that the Live! Poker Room continues to remain open. The poker room is still hosting cash games and has plans to run its Black Chip Bounty tournament on August 29 which has a $30,000 guaranteed prize pool and a $400 buy-in.
Some poker players have taken to social media to question the logic of cancelling the WPT Maryland Live tournament which is set to take place in September but continuing to operate the Live! Poker Room as usual.
One possible explanation for this is that Live! Poker Room is comfortable handling and managing the current flow of players at its poker tables. The WPT Maryland Live tournament will attract a lot more players including those from out of state and is probably why Live! Poker Room does not want to take a risk of a potential COVID outbreak at its premises.
