WPT Season XIV Kicks Off in Montreal; Stay Tuned for Live Coverage
Season XIII of the World Poker Tour (WPT) just came to a close on Wednesday with Asher Conniff winning the season-ending WPT World Championship for $973,683, and our attention has already shifted to the first stop of Season XIV, beginning on Friday.
Just across the St. Lawrence River from beautiful, historic Montreal, Quebec, is the world-renowned Playground Poker Club. They will once again be hosting the partypoker.net WPT Canadian Spring Championship, kicking off the season with a $3,500 event from May 1-6.
If you can't make it to Montreal, follow along as if you're right on the rail. PokerNews will be on site to live report all of the action which you can follow on our live reporting pages. Also, our video team will be on hand to bring you clips from Montreal, led by Caitlyn Howe.
Last year, the Canadian Spring Championship served as a WPT National event, but it appears on the Season XIV calendar as the first tour stop of WPT, sans-National. It joins WPT Montreal and WPT Fallsview as the third Canadian full tour stop on the calendar.
While some tournaments offer the winner a trophy, ring, bracelet, or watch, Playground Poker Club has become well known for their unique prize of a huge, sparkling trophy belt. When 1,079 entries passed through registration last year, it was Jason Comtois who won the title of Canadian Spring Champion and the enviable belt.
The Canadian Spring Championship is the culmination point of the Playground Poker Spring Classic — a huge 16-event, 18-day whirlwind of tournaments with buy-ins as cheap as $150 in a scattershot of game formats. This festival of poker brings hundreds of players to the poker club and, along with the partypoker online qualifiers and Playground satellites, will ensure a large field in the WPT event that caps the series.
This five-day tournament features two Day 1s with a next-day reentry format, meaning players can fire two bullets and take the largest stack to Day 2 if they qualify on both days. The two starting flights have 11 a.m. starts and will play 10 one-hour levels. Day 2 and the final table also have one-hour levels, but Days 3 and 4 have 90-minute levels, and the blinds will be accelerated to 30 minutes once heads-up play begins on Day 5.
With partypoker Team Pros like Tony Dunst and Mike Sexton likely to make an appearance along with members of the Playground Players Club like Antonio Esfandiari, Jeff Gross, Jonathan Roy, and Gavin Smith, you won't want to miss any of the action. Follow it all here on our live reporting page and stay tuned for video updates.
For a little taste of what's to come, here's Caitlyn Howe in Montreal last November for WPT Montreal:
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