Online Poker News Blog

World Poker Tour to sign agreement with China despite country’s gambling ban

August 7, 2007 on 5:05 pm | In Poker News |

China’s very strict Communist government bans a lot of immoral acts and items such as strippers, abortion pills, and explicit sex and violence in the media. Sometimes, they ban seemingly innocent things like popular opinion websites, aids meetings, and cartoons. Heck, they had even banned reincarnation in Tibet.

So it’s no surprise that China’s government bans all forms of gambling, including poker. Poker is after all a crime and is right down there with drugs and prostitution. But what did the World Poker Tour Enterprises Inc. (WPT) do?

You’d think that they would stay away from China and that they would just focus on more lenient and poker-crazed countries like the US. But no, the WPT is actually bringing the World Poker Tour right to China.

While the prizes and the players have not been discussed yet, Steve Lipscomb, founder, president, and CEO of WPT, is already due to sign the 5-year agreement with China Leisure Sports Administrative Center (CLSAC). Wondering how he managed to do this, the WPT stated that they just want to promote poker by creating and commercializing China’s first national poker competition.

All well and good for WPT but let’s see how China’s Communist government is going to handle this.

Source: IHT