Playing poker with professional hockey player in New York, GGPoker partnering with a casino in Toronto, and the World Poker Tour letting us know where the’ll be in the first part of 2025 are some of the short stacks CardsChat picked up in its latest orbit of poker news.
GGPoker goes live
GGPoker is now the official sponsor of the Great Canadian Casino Resort Toronto’s poker room, and as the owner of the World Series of Poker series, the casino will be Ontario’s home to WSOP Circuit and ring events.
The casino opened in 2023. It hosted its first WSOP Circuit series last spring, which was also sponsored by GGPoker. The world’s largest online site also operates WSOP.ca in Ontario. Last March, 324 entries into the Main Event were won through GGPoker.
That satellite system will surely be up and running for WSOP events that will be held at the Great Canadian Casino Resort Toronto in the future. Dates for the 2025 series should be released soon.
GGPoker purchased the WSOP brand from Caesars Entertainment last year for $500 million. The partnership gives the NSUS Group — the company that owns GGPoker — a sort of hometown poker room as it’s based out of Toronto. By the way, NSUS is pronounced as “answers.”
Getting crunchy at Turning Stone
Drop the gloves at Turning Stone Resort Casino in New York on Jan. 28, and take on some professional hockey players at the Syracuse Crunch Knockout Poker Tournament, featuring players from the minor league hockey team that feeds the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The $125 event will feature a line or two of Syracuse Crunch players, and whoever knocks a player out, gets an autograph and the jersey off their back. Turning Stone will also raffle off two full team signed jerseys at the end of the event.
Registration will begin at 5 p.m., two hours before the start of the tournament.
World Poker Tour releases partial schedule
The WPT released the schedule for the first half of 2025 of its championship events.
“With the arrival of the new year, we look ahead to the 23rd season of the World Poker Tour,” said WPT CEO Adam Pliska. “Poker players, globally, can mark their calendars for some amazing WPT festivals to come in the first half of 2025.”
Putting the global into WPT Global, the schedule is loaded with international events that take players to all corners of the world starting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia from Feb. 19-24 with a buy-in of $3,500.
According to the WPT ,”The WPT Cambodia Championship is the marquee tournament of the overall festival at NagaWorld Integrated Resort that also includes the $1,100 WPT Prime Cambodia Championship running Feb. 14-18.”
