China: Poker Tours Begin to Embrace the New Market

While Open-Face Chinese Poker remains all the rage among players, poker in China is creating a different kind of buzz. The market that many thought was closed to poker tournaments due to strict regulations is opening up to the game, thanks to some of the biggest companies in the industry.

Players from China have long been a staple in poker tournament fields. Two of the top players from the region are Johnny Chan and David Chiu. Other names that many poker fans recognize include Kenneth Wong, Celina Lin, Nicky Jin, and Xing Zhou, though it is interesting to note that the top-ranked player on the Global Poker Index Asia Top 100 list is Hui Chen-Kuo of China.

It has been tough, however, for China to rise to prominence in the poker tournament market because of the illegality of gambling in the country. Though Macau is one of the top gambling destinations in the world, China’s mainland forbids most forms of gambling. It was going to take some smart business executives and the championing of poker as a skill game to break down the walls of China, so to speak.

In 2012, the World Poker Tour announced its first tournament in China via a partnership with Beijing Ourgame Ltd and the MGM Grand Sanya Resort. The WPT National China tournament was scheduled for December last year in Sanya on Hainan Island. Beijing Ourgame CEO Frank Ng announced satellites that would welcome more than 60,000 Chinese players to compete for the tournament seats.

The result was a sold-out tournament that surpassed its original cap of 500 players to raise it to 530. Players like Phil Hellmuth, Sam Razavi, David Chiu, and David Steicke headed to China to compete, and others who joined included McLean Karr, Wang Feng, and Winfred Yu. And of course, the tournament director was none other than Matt Savage.

The Main Event resulted in Zheng Hua Lei winning approximately $192K, and the WPT seemed pleased with the success of its initial foray into China.

PokerStars then picked up the baton and headed to Sanya this week. While PokerStars has long been a host of tournament series in Macau and even now has the PokerStars LIVE at the City of Dreams poker room there, the company quietly started the Chinese Series of Poker on the island of Hainan.

The CSOP, as it’s called, is sponsored by PokerStars and hosted by the Province Bureau of Culture and Sports, as well as Sanya’s government. May 15 was the first day of action, and the second day expected to include names like Celina Lin and Raymond Wu.

For now, tournament poker seems to be confined to Hainan, but talks could be in progress with other destinations on mainland China. With the WPT and PokerStars leading the way thus far, there is no telling how those walls may fall and begin to open China’s doors even wider to welcome the game.