There is no doubt that there are more people playing online poker then live poker, but at the same time there are some major poker events every year that both live and online players frequent. The one thing about the major live poker tournaments is that they generally cost more to buy into, but they have massive prize pools often reaching well into the seven figures. We’re going to talk a little about some of the major poker events that take place each year so that you don’t miss out on them.
* The World Series of Poker started way back in 1970 and is easily the most anticipated event of the entire calendar year. What once started out as a single tournament has evolved into a massive series of tournaments that culminates with the $10K WSOP Main Event. The past several years have been huge in terms of success for the WSOP. Thousands of people travel to Las Vegas every year now to take part in this massive series of tournaments and many people walk away with more money then they came with.
* The World Poker Tour is another massive series of poker tournaments that are played each year. The WPT events are spread out throughout the year though and aren’t played within one timeframe. If you want to play in the WPT you may also need to travel since the events are played all over the world. Recently the World Poker Tour was taken over by Party Gaming and I’m sure we’ll see some nice improvements over the next couple of years.
* The European Poker Tour is only a few years old, but if you have played poker at all recently then you’ll have most likely heard of it. The EPT is very well advertised and has quickly become one of the biggest series of poker tournaments every year. One of the reasons the EPT is such a success is because it’s owned by Poker Stars which is the biggest online poker room in the industry. The EPT is played in various countries throughout Europe every year and they constantly add new events to their roster every year.
* The Asia Pacific Poker Tour or APPT for short is one of the up and coming poker tours. It started in 2007, but already has a loyal following in Asia and Australia. Without the APPT there would be thousands of poker players in Asia that would never have played live. The APPT brought the first ever live tournament to several countries including China and Korea. The size of the APPT tournaments are much smaller then the ones listed above, but within 5-10 years I could see this becoming the second largest tour of the year.
* The Latin American Poker Tour or LAPT is much smaller then the ones listed above, but it definitely has room to grow as poker becomes more mainstream in the region. 2008 was the first year that the LAPT was played and it featured only three tournaments including one in Brazil, Costa Rica and Uruguay.