Sunday, August 13, 2006

Foxwoods Resort Casino will once again be the epicenter of the poker world as the prestigious World Poker Finals (WPF) and hugely popular World Poker Tour (WPT) return to New England this fall. This prominent three-week event attracts the game's biggest stars, throngs of amateurs, thousands of fans, national television cameras and an expected total prize pool of $15 million, consistently one of the top five prize pools on the WPT tour. Last year's Texas No-Limit Hold'em champion Nick Schulman, the youngest in the history of the World Poker Tour, took home a cool $2.1 million of an overall WPF prize pool of $12.3 million. The poker action gets underway with opening day qualifying on October 25th. The final tables take place on November 16th with the Professional Poker Tour event, followed by the highly-anticipated WPT World Poker Finals grand finale on November 17th, before a live audience, with television cameras rolling from the Travel Channel. "The prestige, participants and prize pool continue to grow each year," said Terry Chiaradio, newly anointed Director of Poker Operations at Foxwoods. "We're expecting more than 6,000 entries and based on last year's winner, it's anyone's game." Foxwoods is a charter member of the World Poker Tour, as well as home to the only WPT-branded poker room in the country. The WPT Poker Room at Foxwoods is the only poker room in New England and is the largest casino based poker room in the country.