Online Poker News Blog

Now, world poker tour goes global!

The World Poker Tour Enterprises (WPT) has finally sealed the deal with the China Leisure Sports Administrative Center (CLSAC) on bringing the World Poker Tour to China.

The WPT might have said in a statement that they want to “promote the sport of poker, by helping to create, expand, and commercialize China’s first ever national poker competition”, but it’s a little hard to see how they’re going to do that. Because apparently, there will be no betting involved at all.

Poker has always been a game of chance, no matter what some people say about it being a sport and a game of skill. It relies on the odds of the right cards coming out for you and those unknown odds are what the players bet on. The unknown is what makes poker exciting. Without betting on those odds, how are they going to raise the stakes? They might as well have tried to play ping pong without the ping pong ball.

The Chinese government is notorious for being very morally strict so the WPT at least deserves to be applauded to have been able to bring poker to China. The agreement that the WPT and the CLSAC signed is for five years with the option to extend.

source: The Register