The number of canceled poker events worldwide is growing due to coronavirus pandemic. The Golden Poker Million Marrakech, which was supposed to take place on March 13-22, has been canceled.
The event was to take place in the Es Saadi Resort, but the government-imposed restrictions to prevent the virus from spreading and resulted in the event closing its doors to the players.
This is just one in the line of many events that are being canceled just a couple of days before they were supposed to take place. The mass-cancelation was somewhat expected as the coronavirus has been spreading pretty quickly all over the world.
One of the high-profile poker tournaments that was also recently canceled was the SXSW festival that was supposed to take place in Austin, Texas. Moreover, popular poker stops such as Triton Super High Roller Series in Jeju were also canceled because of the virus.
The Official Statement by Casino De Marrakech
The officials of Casino De Marrakech stated that they had to cancel the event for reasons that were beyond their own will. As noted in the statement, the Moroccan authorities imposed various measures to fight off the coronavirus, and one of them was canceling all the official events throughout March.
This is especially applied to events that were supposed to attract people who were coming from abroad.
Six days have passed since the appearance of the first case of the coronavirus in Morocco, and the authorities of this country immediately made some changes that include canceling a lot of events.
WPT Statement about WPT Barcelona
Not all governments in all countries respond to the epidemic with canceling events. As a matter of fact, World Poker Tour Barcelona, which is scheduled for March 22-April 5, will take place in Casino Barcelona nevertheless. The event will stick to the schedule, for now, meaning no changes were made to it.
Yet, there were a couple of important changes that may not be very attractive to players. Namely, all the announced guaranteed prizes were removed as the attendance is expected to be low due to the coronavirus.
The World Poker Tour published an official statement about that on its website. According to the statement, the organizers of WPT Barcelona would no longer be able to provide guaranteed prizes for the events that are supposed to take place there.
Moreover, all the qualifier tournaments that are currently active on partypoker and offer players an opportunity to win a WPT Passport will continue as scheduled until the start of the festival.
Finally, the statement claims that Casino Barcelona made sure to provide “ample sanitization products” that players would have an opportunity to use during the festival. Moreover, the casino will do its best to “provide for a clean playing environment.”
Despite all of that, many players are already discouraged from traveling the world and taking part in live poker events. Therefore, if the festival really takes place as planned, we could expect to see some record-low numbers. But let’s not leave anything up to chance and wait for the actual festival to start.
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