New Dates Confirmed For World Poker Tour Delayed Final Tables From 2020

The 2020 World Poker Tour Gardens Poker Championship is one of three WPT delayed final tables that are now set to play down to a winner more than a year after the final six players were initially decided. The WPT was scheduled to play out that event, along with the WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open and the WPT L.A. Poker Classic over a three-day period from Mar. 31 through Apr. 2, 2020 at the HyperX Esports Arena at the Luxor Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, but the tour was forced to postpone those final tables due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Card Player can now confirm that these three events, along with the final table of the upcoming 2021 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown will play to a conclusion this spring at a new venue: the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas.

The 2020 WPT Gardens Poker Championship is now scheduled for Mar. 10, 2021. That means that the champion will be decided 422 days after the final six players bagged up their chips back on Jan. 13, 2020. The players were originally only meant to wait 11 weeks before playing down to a winner. Recent Galfond Challenge participant and two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Chance Kornuth is the chip leader among the final six players.

The 2020 WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open will now be the first of a series of three final tables played out from May 16-18. The 2020 WPT L.A. Poker Classic will take place on May 17, while the 2021 WPT SHR Poker Showdown will conclude on May 18, just a few weeks after the final six are decided on Apr. 27, 2021.

“We want to make sure that not only are our partner casino… are ready to go, but also that we are making sure that our player safety and our staff safety is paramount,” said WPT Executive Tour Director Matt Savage when asked about the difficulties of this delayed final table situation in an interview with Card Player last year. “We are ready to go… as soon as things open up and hopefully, the players won’t have those travel restrictions at that time. We need to be very cognizant of that as well, to make sure that we can get everybody to those final tables and do it in a safe manner. So like I said, we’re ready to go as soon as things change and I believe that the players are as well. All the players that made the final tables in question have been paid out sixth-place money. I hope that those players are doing fine and that we can get cards back in the air as soon as it is safely possible.”

The change in venue for these final tables may be the result of a change in the ownership of the WPT which took place in January. The tour was sold by Allied Esports, which owns the HyperX Esports Arena, to Element Partners, LLC for a reported $78,250,000.

Here is a look at the schedule for these upcoming delayed final tables:

Photo credit: Joe Giron / WPT.

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