A stop at the Venetian has been added to the 2019 WPT Main Tour schedule, March 22-26. Dubbed the “Vegas Showdown,” it will be the first World Poker Tour appearance at Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Strip casino.
Venetian is widely considered one of the top poker rooms in Vegas. The 37-table card room is a popular spot for low- to mid-stakes cash games and tournaments.
But it’s rare for a major poker event to be hosted at the casino, until now. The $3,500 buy-in Vegas Showdown is part of the March Deepstack Extravaganza, a regular poker tournament series.
Vegas is Place to Be
Las Vegas is slowly becoming a favorite spot on the World Poker Tour. Starting tomorrow, the $10,000 buy-in WPT Five Diamond Poker Classic, one of the last major poker tournaments of the year, kicks off at Bellagio, a casino less than a mile from Venetian.
In May, both the Aria Championship and Tournament of Champions is scheduled for Aria, another Strip property. In most past years, only the Bellagio hosted a World Poker Tour event. Las Vegas. But now Sin City, certainly one of the top poker destinations in the world, is a WPT hot spot.
Angelica Hael, VP of Global Tour Management for the World Poker Tour, referred to Venetian as a “historic venue.” And it’s hard to argue otherwise. The Sands Corp-owned property is the second-largest hotel in the world. With 7,117 rooms, Venetian-Palazzo is only surpassed by the First World Hotel in Malaysia (7,351).
The upcoming Vegas Showdown costs $3,500 to enter and has a $1 million guaranteed prize pool.
Downside to Everything
While many poker players consider Venetian one of the best places to play poker in Las Vegas, some refuse to even step foot in the casino. And that’s because the CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Sheldon Adelson, certainly isn’t a friend of poker.
Adelson’s long-time anti-online poker stance has angered many in the poker community. So, for that reason, some pros won’t play at Venetian. But the card room still attracts large fields for similar events such as the $3,500 MSPT tournament this past summer that had 1,096 entries, generating a prize pool over $3 million, far exceeding the $1 million guarantee.
Pavel Plesuv won the massive event for $640,000. If the Vegas Showdown even comes close to matching the MSPT’s total entries, the WPT should consider it a success.
