World Poker Tour (WPT)

The World Poker Tour (WPT) is a live poker tour founded in the United States in 2002 by television producer and attorney Steven Lipscomb. Its first event, the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio in Las Vegas, was won by Denmark's Gus Hansen. The tour built its name on televised final tables, and every Main Tour winner joins the WPT Champions Club. Since 2021 the WPT has been owned by Element Partners, a privately held investment vehicle, which bought it for US$105 million.

Asia and Oceania are now a fixed part of the WPT year. A WPT Korea Main Event in Jeju went to Japan's Masato Yokosawa back in 2013. WPT Cambodia has played at NagaWorld in Phnom Penh since November 2019, and the first WPT Australia festival followed on the Gold Coast in 2019, with the tour’s first Australian Main Tour event held there in 2022. The tour has also visited Japan since 2017, Vietnam since 2019 and Macau since 2024, although WPT Tokyo will not run in 2026. Today the regional stops center on Cambodia, South Korea and Australia. In South Korea, festivals have been held in Jeju (at the casino now called LES A Casino) and, from 2026, at INSPIRE Entertainment Resort in Incheon as WPT Seoul; the Australian leg is played at The Star Sydney. These festivals run from about ten days to three weeks, and the largest Cambodian series offer more than 70 trophy events.

The WPT works on two levels. Main Tour stops carry Championship Events with buy-ins of a few thousand dollars, such as AUD 5,000 in Sydney or US$3,500 in Phnom Penh. WPT Prime, launched in 2022 to replace WPTDeepStacks, adds mid-stakes Main Events around US$1,100 for recreational players. Many players win their seats online on WPT Global, the tour's own online poker site, and the official World Poker Tour site lists the current stops.

Many see 2022 as the start of the tour’s modern era, when the WPT World Championship moved to Wynn Las Vegas. According to the tour, the first edition there drew nearly 3,000 entrants and a prize pool of about US$29 million, and the 2023 edition carried a US$40 million guarantee. Asia has its own landmarks. The March 2024 WPT Korea festival in Jeju drew 4,146 players across 28 events, and the tour reported its 1,065-entry Main Event as a WPT Korea record. In 2025 the WPT Australia Championship Event drew 600 entries and a prize pool of AUD 2.98 million (~US$2.0 million), won by local player Alan Pham. A few months later, China's Xiaosheng Zheng won the US$3,500 Championship at WPT Cambodia 2026 from 425 entries.