The WPT is on its way to Morocco in just a couple of days. The WPTDeepStack Marrakech festival kicks off on September 22, running through September 30 at the Casino de Marrakech. There will be a total of 26 events, including the €1,200 (US$1,394) Main Event, whose prize pool has yet to be determined.
There will be a menu for just about everyone’s tastes. NLHE is the main course, served in a number of styles—turbo, bounty, eight-max, monster stack and more. To spice things up, there is also a Chinese Poker Open Face tourney thrown into the mix.
The Main Event will run from September 27 through September 30. The tournament starts with all players sitting down with 30,000 chips and playing 40-minute levels, and blinds will start at 100/100. In the third level of the action, the big blind ante format will be introduced, requiring the player in the big blind position to make the ante for the entire table.
On Day 2, which will get underway on September 29, the clock moves from 40 minutes to 46 minutes. The final table will be set on September 30, with the final nine playing to 60-minute blinds. Once the heads-up battle begins, the clock is dropped to only 30 minutes until the tourney finds a winner.
The Marrakech festival is now entering its ninth year. It has been popular over the years and saw 416 entries recorded in its inaugural year in 2009 when the buy-in was €4,500. That year, Christophe Savary from France took down the tournament and won $558,515. The next two years saw participation cut in half, but it rebounded in 2013 with a reduced buy-in of only €1,500. There were 465 entries that year and the first-place winner, Alain Manquant took home $171,921.
The festival was held last in October 2017 and the buy-in was once again reduced. 433 entries were recorded for the €1,200 game, and Mamouni Smain of France was the big winner with $105,255. Smain has been on the poker scene for about the past ten years and has been seen at the poker felt around the world. He has earned over $527,000 in live action, according to The Hendon Mob, playing on tables in virtually every corner of the globe.
