Three years ago it looked as if the WPT would be facing disaster. Shrinking Fields participant, not an online skills and meant virtually no presence in Europe of the WPT is an existence as a wallflower in the shadow of the great World Series in North America and Europe in the EPT.

Now the situation has changed significantly. With the WPT in Prague with more than 560 players so far been greatest WPT in Europe played, also stand to Prague, Paris, Barcelona, ​​Dublin, Venice and Vienna, a number of interesting venues available, and with PartyPoker and bwin are two powerful online poker rooms as a partner.

Steve Heller, CEO of WPT sees this development is far from reached its end. “We want to come up in future at all tour stops in Europe with live updates and live streams. In addition, there will soon be Europe’s Royal Flush Girls. And then we’ll take a WPT Champions Cup on the road. On it all WPT winner will be engraved. ”

“The initiative is actually from last September, came as the entire staff of the WPT in Paris, and accompanied the event with a video crew, and we will repeat this experiment at the WPT Venice in February 2012.”

Although the WPT is relatively short and Prague just before the EPT was set, Heller wants to know this is not understood as an attack on the competition.

“The expansion of the WPT is not a direct response to the EPT. We are not in competition. We just respond to the urgent need for WPT events in Europe. We are a global organization, and we want to offer fans all over the world experience the WPT. ”

The year 2011 was in the poker world, mainly through the Full Tilt fiasco and the Black Friday marked. Nevertheless, the WPT has continued to grow. This is a whole package of measures that the World Poker Tour will make more interesting. Apparently it worked with the community.

“Since the beginning of the ninth season of the television company, we have raised to the level of the first season. We have hired Kimberly Lansing as a moderator (which has now been replaced by Marianela Pereyra), attended with Tony Dunst and the Raw Deal for a bit more controversy and the Royal Flush Girls for a bit more glamorous.

All this has led to the poker community has recognized our efforts. The quotas for television broadcasts in the U.S. have risen by 30% within a year. ”

The question arises, how to go there. Will continue to expand the WPT, and if so where? Europe is the market of the future or is it Asia?

“We expect that poker, and thus the WPT continues to grow. We receive support from bwin poker rooms like Party and, but, the WPT is an independent organization and is also working with a number of other online poker rooms, and other partners. In recent years we have spent a lot of work to establish ourselves in Europe. We will build on this development, and the poker community can already look forward to more time events in more countries. “