WPT Prime Cyprus Added to 2024 Calendar

The World Poker Tour has announced the addition of WPT Prime Cyprus to its Season XXII schedule. The festival will take place at the Chamada Prestige Hotel & Spa in Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus from 15-26 August, 2024. The $1,100 buy-in WPT Prime Championship will run from 22-26 August, with a $1m guaranteed prize pool.

This will be the first time that a WPT Prime Championship has been held in Cyprus, but not the first time that the WPT has visited the sunny Mediterranean island. There have been four previous WPT Main Tour events in Cyprus, in 2009, 2012, 2013 and 2014. WPT Prime is a much more accessible tour, with a more affordable buy-in and should be a popular late summer destination for European players.

The venue will be a new one to most players. Although it has held its own events before, this is the first event of the calibre of the WPT to visit the five star Chamada Prestige. The full tournament schedule is yet to be released.

Players from countries where WPT Global is operational can take part in online satellites to win a WPT Prime Passport, which will be valid to use for WPT Prime. 

WPT Championship events on the Main Tour were held at Merit Cyprus during Seasons 8, 10, 11 and 12 and was known as the WPT Merit Cyprus Classic. The first time that the World Poker Tour visited in 2009 the buy-in for the Championship event was $10,300. Frenchman Thomas Bichon, who honed his poker skills in high stakes cash games at the Vic Casino in London. 

At the subsequent WPT Merit Cyprus Classic events a few years later, the buy-in had dropped to $4,400. They were not the biggest WPT events in terms of attendance and this may have contributed to them being dropped from season 13 onwards, however Cyprus has become a much more popular poker destination, with the Mediterranean Poker Party, which included the Triton Poker Series holding a three week-festival in 2022, which helped re-establish Cyprus as a destination for major poker events. In October 2024 the European Poker Tour will hold its first event in Cyprus.