The World Poker Tour is headed back to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida this month for the launch of their 20th Season with the Lucky Hearts Poker Open.

Running from January 13-26, the two-week-long festival features the first WPT event of the year – the WPT Main Tour $3,500 buy-in Championship event with a $2 million guaranteed prize pool.

“Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood has been a fantastic partner for the World Poker Tour and starting our 20th season in Florida is a fantastic choice,” said Adam Pliska, WPT President and CEO. “Additionally, we cannot wait to let the poker world in on some of the special incentives we have planned for our 20th anniversary.”

It was just one year ago that the Lucky Hearts Poker Open served as a return to the live poker scene for the WPT after a ten-month hiatus brought on by the pandemic. Uncertain of what to expect in terms of attendance, the event shattered expectations by bringing out 1,573 entries, making it one of the largest Main Tour fields in the history of the company. In the end, the final three players made a deal and Ilyas Muradi was crowned the winner, earning $605,000 and entry into the WPT Champions Club.

The five-day $3,500 WPT LHPO Main Event kicks off on January 21 with two starting days and unlimited re-entry until the start of level 9 for both days.

There are a couple of notable structure changes this year as compared to the tournament in 2021. Once again, players will start with 40,000 in chips and have hour-long levels on Day 1 and Day 2. However, in 2021, Level 1 started with 100-100 blinds and no ante. The big blind ante did not kick in until Level 3. Here in 2022, there’s a 200 BBA right off the bat with blinds at 100-200. Essentially, the first two hours from 2021 have been removed and players will be playing more meaningful pots right from the get-go.

Additionally, back in 2021, Day 3 started with 90-minute levels no matter how many players were left. This year, the time remains at 60 minutes until the field has played down to 40 players. At that point, the levels are increased to 90 minutes right down to the final table. With six players remaining, we’ll see 60-minute levels and 30 minutes when it hits heads-up.

However, there’s another difference and that’s this year, the Lucky Hearts Poker Open final table will be live streamed on WPT.com.

Surrounding the Main Event, the LHPO is offering players a series of 31 total tournaments with $5 million guaranteed across the entire series. There are plenty of low-to-mid stakes buy-ins offered daily. Highlights of the schedule include the $1 million guaranteed $600 Deep Stack NLHE kick-off event running January 13-16, two $1,100 Deep Stack events with $100K guarantees, and a $1,700 Bounty Event with $100,000 guaranteed.

For those that want to play a little higher, there’s the $5,000 NLHE event with $200,000 guaranteed on January 25. In addition to the Main Event, the tournament that is sure to draw out the big names in the game is the $25,500 High Roller with $1 million guaranteed taking place on January 24-25.

“Our team is constantly striving to deliver a premier experience for poker players, and we believe the results speak for themselves,” said Jason Heidenthan, Tournament Director at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. “We look forward to being a big part of the World Poker Tour’s 20th anniversary and helping them kick things off with Lucky Hearts Poker Open in January.”

To help people get in on the action, Seminole Hard Rock will be running Mega Satellites for various events every day starting on January 11. A full schedule of events is available on the Seminole Hard Rock website.

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