Three barrels of a unique World Poker Tour vintage including a virgin appearance in South America; a first for Kazakhstan in Amsterdam, and another award for Andreas Klatt.
There was a time when the World Poker Tour (WPT) used to wind me up. I suffer from little man syndrome, a disease brought on by being short, working class, and living on a tiny island.
So, when I saw a title of a brand with the word World squeezed in, and then no sign of the brand ever taking their services to the World it tended to piss me off.
Today, I only get angry at baseball’s World Series in part due to the decision made by the WPT to pucker up their plumage and plunge headlong into earth’s population.
Thus far, the WPT has taken their juggernaut to four different continents (North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia). In November, that changes to five when they set up camp in Uruguay.
Once again, the WPTDeepStacks Tour will act as the minimum viable product test base. The Enjoy Punta del Este will host a $1,500 buy-in WPTDeepStacks Main Event Nov 1-5. The entire festival runs from Oct 31 to Nov 5 with an array of side events not yet privy to the eyes of those looking to add Uruguay onto their new travel plan.
And there’s more.
The festival will be filmed for broadcast during the Season XVI WPT television coverage on FOX Sports Regional Networks. CodigoPoker will pick up the slack in the local networks.
The Enjoy brand of casinos is vastly experienced at hosting poker events after being the home of so many Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT) events throughout the years.
The news comes less than a week after the WPT announced plans to move into India for the first time with WPTDeepStacks once again being used as the barometer.
Daniel Daniyar Wins the WPT Amsterdam Main Event
There was another geographical first for the WPT in Amsterdam where Daniel Daniyar defeated 224 entrants to win the WPT Main Event at the Holland Casino to become the first WPT Champions Club member from Kazakhstan.
Daniyar overcame a final table that included former Bridge World Champion, Jan Jansma, and Jack Salter’s brother Louis Salter. The latter made it to heads-up where 
he did well to fight back from a 6:1 chip deficit before Daniyar finally found the hand needed to cut off the head of the viper when his flush draw hit the river against Salter’s pocket kings with the money going in on the flop.
The newly minted WPT Amsterdam champ eliminated four of the five players on the final table and books himself a seat into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions (TOC), following in the footsteps of fellow WPT Amsterdam winner, Farid Yachou, who won the inaugural event two years ago.
Final Table Results
1. Daniel Daniyar – €152,600
2. Louis Salter – €106,710
3. Jan Jansma – €65,570
4. Shyngis Satubayev – €39,885
5. Jorn Walthaus – €30,800
6. Jonathan Rozema – €25,525
Andreas Klatt Wins The MonteDam Swing Leaderboard
While it may have been a sweet moment for poker to see the WPT and PokerStars working together through the creation of the PokerStars Championship WPT MonteDam Swing competition, I’m a not sure the numbers show it was a success.
When the WPT first visited Amsterdam in 2015, the event attracted 341 entrants and was viewed by all as a tremendous success with feedback from the players bordering on why the hell hasn’t a major tour been here before?
When Andjelko AndreJevic won the event the year after there were 318 entrants, and now that’s dropped to 224 despite the marketing campaign designed to get PokerStars Championship Monte Carlo players to take the trip to see the tulips.
It will be interesting to see if the two giants continue working together in the future, but in the meantime, the winner of the leaderboard contest was Andreas Klatt by quite a margin.
Klatt defeated 1,252 entrants to win the €151,445 top prize in the €1,100 No-Limit Hold’em PokerStars National Championship and then finished runner-up in the €5,300 buy-in PokerStars Championship Main Event for €402,786.
The German star then travelled to Amsterdam with a healthy lead and cemented his place at the top with a tenth place finish in the €3,300 WPT Amsterdam Main Event for €13,435. Klatt wins a PokerStars Championship Barcelona package worth €7,500.
