WPT and Pokerking are running a 25k HU tournament over the week.

All the players are down in Cabo, basically playing battleship poker. They play online but can see and talk to eachother live.

The lineup is the most smart and fun gathering I've seen. It has the absolute live legends like Ivey Dwan Antonius. They have elite tournament highrollers (Greenwood, Chidwick, Smith..), and they have complete airball celebrities (JRB, Alexandra Botez, some japanese popstar, Steve Aioki..). Not to mention online superstars like Stefan, Limitless, Btnclicker, (Polk), Linus!

Current bracket: (spoilers) https://wptmedia.wpt.com/wp-content/...Bracket@2x.jpg

Starting bracket: (spoiler free)


You can find replays of the play on WPT youtube: https://www.youtube.com/worldpokertour/videos

What do you think, is this the most fun lineup you've seen?
What is the powerranking of this thing? Btnclicker, Linus, Limitless/Stefan, the rest?

Just wanted to make this first post spoiler free but we can ofc discuss the matches now as they go on
sry for the shots fired JRB, you can handle it

Rooting for Botez, bring the Twitch viewers into poker!
Too bad most of the celebs got knocked out already

Lol hope they show full match of limitless v buttonclickr today considering their history. Some rta accusations have been thrown so could be bit awkward with the cam/mics altho it will probably be very silent.

Been watching a few matches and like it so far, production level couldve been way better

Apparently they are not just live on webcam/microphone - they are literally in front of eachother, true battleship poker!



Bunch of fun matches today; Polk vs Antonius, Buttonclicker v limitless(!)

She has been streaming the matches and showing coaching sessions live on her channel so hopefully, it has got lots of new people interested in learning the game. She has like 4x the number of views for those streams than the official WPT channel covering it!

https://www.twitch.tv/botezlive

i watched a bit of the limitless match yesterday. was pleasantly surprised that they showed hole cards!

cool tourney.

Was Doug firing shots at Tom re the Durrr challenge?

How is pokerstars or gg not signing botez already rofl? Shes the perfectcandidate for this

Who won Tom vs Doug lol?

good question! seems like a perfect fit. she also has a younger sister, andrea, who also streams chess.

Polk beat Dwan, and will play Patrik Antonius next. Current bracket: https://wptmedia.wpt.com/wp-content/...Bracket@2x.jpg

About the Botez sisters: I believe they are signed with E-sports organization Team Envy. Not sure if this stops them from signing a poker deal etc

1st I heard about this. Thanks for sharing.

Watched a bit of it on replay. Very good production. Right choice for commentators.

Players need to drink more and have fun. . The small snippets I watched they just sat there and stared at screen.

I know its not their job to act a certain way, but its WPTs job to create good content. WPT should have come up with something to lighten it up and make it more entraining for more than just core poker audience.

p.s. Seriously Joey. Wear sunscreen. Skin cancer is a thing.

Did someone say battleship poker??

WPT producers should give players an expected minimum % of banter between players. Copious amounts of alcohol as well.

Alexandra Botez (Woman FIDE master chess streamer) currently streaming behind the scenes: https://www.twitch.tv/botezlive

She's playing Sam Greenwood today. You should all basically be rooting for her if you like for poker to do well...

Actual WPT stream should start in 2hrs with the commentary and holecards etc

srs, fk all these barnacled regs, for the love of science pls let her beat ivey in the finals

Botez has done so much in bringing Chess to the spotlight for young people on Twitch.

Her playing poker excites me, not sure how into it she is, but her playing poker is literally +EV every single time.

if greenwood wins i’m ddosing rio

I don't understand. Surely Botez and other streamers/artists etc didn't put up $25K to play heads up poker against some of the best players in the world. Did they? Why in the world would they do that?

Or did WPT cover the entries for the amateurs etc?

WPT covered all expenses for the tournament which is in Cabo and the buy-in for the non-pros that were invited.

Stream for today is live - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jVnY0fLmJs

It seems mental. The money they have spent and as you said hardly advertised. The twitch WPT stream currently has 500 viewers. That said the likes of Botez blogs about it on twitch have views in the 100k's so maybe the idea is just to advertise to the audiences of all the people invited and they are really doing the leg work in that regard.

Overall the videos/streams for the event have roughly 900k views. But I admit this could have been marketed better.

There is lots of supplementary footage being taken, and this tournament will be made into edited episodes.

The match between Antonius and Polk was top notch stuff. Super entertaining.

Patrik was the nuts during his match vs Polk, his subtle needles at Polk was hilarious. The conversation flowed well too.

The next matchup was Chidwick and Ellias, not a single word was said during the match.

durrrr joined the commentary booth and spoke quite a lot. Mostly about how god awful both Ellias and Chidwick were playing. Limping 74o with 11bb wasn't impressing him, I guess.

Holy ****, what was that?! Did these two dudes pay their own entry fees? They must not have comprehended that it was a HU tourney.