First U.S. Poker Tournament Affected By Coronavirus

The first U.S.-facing tournament series has been affected by coronavirus concerns.

Live! Casino & Hotel tweeted Wednesday morning that the 2020 World Poker Tour DeepStacks main event has been postponed.

The initial tweet announced that the series was canceled, but clarified in a subsequent tweet that the property was looking into dates later in the year to hold the event. The $1,650 buy-in was scheduled to run March 20-23.

We regret to inform you, due to circumstances beyond our control, the 2020 WPT Deepstacks is canceled.

We apologize for any inconveniences.

— Maryland Live! Poker (@LivePokerRoom) March 11, 2020

Actually postponed. We are looking at future dates

— Maryland Live! Poker (@LivePokerRoom) March 11, 2020

At the time of writing, there are nine confirmed cases in Maryland, according to Johns Hopkins University. There are four more cases in Washington D.C., another nine in Virginia, 15 in New Jersey, 14 in Pennsylvania and 186 in New York.

While this is the first poker tournament affected stateside, several tournaments in other parts of the world have been postponed or canceled.

PokerStars Road to PSPC events in France, Spain, and Germany have been postponed. As has WPT Barcelona, the Winamax Poker Open Grand Final in Madrid and the Bounty Poker Tour Taallinn

Several tournaments in France have been canceled, including the Unibet Deep Stack Poker Open in Aix en Provence and the Bariere Poker Tour Ribeauville. The 888poker LIVE event in Bucharest, Golden Poker Millions in Marrakech and the Norwegian Championships in Dublin have also been axed.

All of those events were scheduled to take place in March. So far in April, the Irish Poker Open has been postponed, while the WPTDeepStacks European Championship in Deauville and the Italian Poker Open have been canceled.

The World Series of Poker Circuit at King’s Casino in Rozvadov took a slightly different approach. It is running its series as planned but has taken all of the prize pool guarantees off of its tournaments.

Earlier this month, the casino temporarily banned any Italian players from entering. Outside of China, Italy has been hit the hardest with the virus with more than 10,000 confirmed cases with 631 deaths and 724 recoveries.

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