The 2015 Norwegian Championships will be held in Norway for the first time, after Amaya Gaming subsidiary Global Poker Tours Ltd declared their intent to host a series of events in the coming months.
Norwegian poker is coming home.
That’s the revelation greeting Norwegian based poker players after Amaya Inc. subsidiary, Global Poker Tours Ltd, announced plans to host the first legal live poker series in the Scandinavian country.
It’s great news for Norwegian based poker players who, for the past 13-years, have had to travel as far and wide as Ireland, England and Latvia to play in their home based Championship event thanks to archaic gaming laws.
In 2014, the Norwegian Championships teamed up with the JP Poker Masters, at the CityWest Hotel in Dublin, Ireland, where Vegard Nygaard defeated a field of 1,263 entrants to take the first prize of €102,780 in the €800 buy-in Main Event. With the traveling no longer a problem, tournament organizers are expected 2,000+ players to turn up, making it the largest Norwegian Championships to date.
The journey for the right to host a championships on home soil started at the beginning of last year. High stakes Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) star, Ola “Odd_Oddsen” Amundsgard, challenged all members of the Norwegian parliament to a heads-up freeroll in a bid to prove that poker was a game of skill.
The Progress Party’s Erlen Wiborg took up the challenge, and Amundsgard took 1,056 hands to beat him. He was willing to part with $170,000 of his own money if he had lost. The event attracted a lot of high profile interest within parliament, and the momentum has flowed into the creation of their first-ever live event.
The series will consist of five regional championships, held throughout the country, climaxing in the Norwegian Championships due to be held in Oslo Nov 18-24. In a nice twist, 5% of all tournament buy-ins will be donated to the Norwegian charity Blodkreftforeningen – a research unit that specializes in leukemia and bone marrow cancer.
More than 100 players pre registered for the Main Event within hours of pre-registration opening up. The buy for the five regional championships will be 1,500 NOK (USD$180) and the Norwegian Championships Main Event will cost 5,000 NOK (USD$600).
Schedule
| Event | Location | Date |
| Ostlands Championships | Oslo | Oct 10-11 |
| Sorland Championships | Kristiansand | Oct 17-18 |
| North Championships | Bodo | Oct 24-25 |
| Central Championships | Trondheim | Oct 31 – Nov 1 |
| Western Championships | Bergen | Nov 7-8 |
| Norwegian Championships | Oslo | Nov 18-24 |
Global Poker Tours Ltd is the live poker tour arm of Amaya Gaming and manages the European Poker Tour, Latin American Poker Tour, Asia Pacific Poker Tour, Australia New Zealand Poker Tour, UK & Ireland Poker Tour and North American Poker Tour.
