Top 3 Developments of 2020: Impact of COVID-19 on Live Poker

Welcome back to the second segment of our end-of-year editorial feature, ‘Top 3 Developments of 2020.’ This editorial feature series focuses on the top developments in the domestic poker industry this past year. There can be no debate that the global pandemic was the biggest news to hit the headlines and that, in turn, it was the driving force behind the significant developments in the poker circuit.

In our last feature, we talked about the legal bans implemented by Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu on the real-money online gaming industry that also banned online poker in these states. Rounding up the top two poker developments of the year, we will discuss the direct impact of COVID-19 on the Indian poker sector. Today’s feature, which is #2 on the list, deals with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on India’s live poker industry.

Live poker has always held a niche section in India. With just Goa and Sikkim having casinos where live poker tournaments can be hosted at scale, the scope for the live circuit to prosper was, in a way, limited. Nevertheless, 2019 saw a resurgence of live tournaments, with two major poker series making a comeback. The iconic India Poker Championship (IPC) returned in July after an almost three-year-long hiatus. Soon after that, the ever-popular Baazi Poker Tour (BPT) also returned for its second edition in October.

Things seemed to be going well with the IPC and BPT hosting another round of events in January 2020. The Deltin Poker Tour (DPT) Xpress also managed to squeeze in a series before it all came crashing down.

With the COVID-19 virus making its way to India, a nationwide lockdown was announced in March. All industries and businesses shut shop, including the casinos of Goa and Sikkim. This essentially meant the end of live poker tournaments for the foreseeable future. Simultaneously, even the international circuit saw live stops getting postponed and canceled. However, the big question on everyone’s mind was would the World Series of Poker (WSOP) be shifted to the online felts?

For the longest time, the brand did not comment on what was going to happen. Ultimately bowing down to the health emergency, even the ‘World’s Biggest Poker Festival’ shifted online, with the inaugural 2020 WSOP Online Series running from July 1 to September 6 on WSOP.com and GGPoker.

Online poker has always been the driving force of the domestic poker industry. With live poker, one has to either travel to Goa or Sikkim, arrange for accommodation, food, and transportation, in addition to their poker bankroll. But in the case of online poker, all a player needs are a working smartphone, tablet, or laptop and decent internet connectivity, and they’re good to go. Given these facts, online poker has always thrived in India, but in the complete absence of live poker during the nationwide lockdown, online poker flourished.

With all upcoming live poker stops canceled, online poker operators went on hyperdrive. Spartan Poker’s IOPC and FTS, Adda52’s AOPS and WPT India Online, PokerBaazi’s ₹5 Crores GTD Endboss and PokerStars India’s INCOOP and INSCOOP were just some of the headline events that kept poker zealots busy during the mandatory self-quarantine period.

With the nationwide lockdown coming into effect in mid-March, casinos in both Goa and Sikkim were shut, and they stayed that way for over eight months. The Goa government finally gave the green signal to casinos to open on November 1, albeit at 50% capacity. Even the Casino Deltin Denzong in Sikkim recently hosted a cash game festival. But this re-opening hasn’t been without hindrances.

Realistically speaking, for India’s live poker scene to get back to where it was in 2019, or even early 2020, it will take a while.

Let’s now take a look back at how the COVID-19 impacted live poker in 2020.

Early Days: When COVID-19 Reared Its Ugly Head

The first case of COVID-19 in India, a virus that originated in China, was reported on January 30. The health emergency’s first impact on the poker industry was felt when players requested PokerBaazi to move the final tables of the PPL#43 Highroller 6-Max 50 Lakhs GTD and PPL#58 The MoneyMaker 1 Crore GTD online. The events, which were a part of the PokerBaazi Premier League (PPL), were initially slated for March 13 and 14, respectively, at the PokerBaazi Live poker room onboard Casino Pride 2 in Goa.

As the country’s situation continued to worsen with the number of positive cases and death tolls rising every day, the Goa government announced a shutdown of all educational institutions, casinos, discos, and clubs. Around the same time, the DPT Xpress March Edition, slated to be held on board the Casino Deltin JAQK, was canceled.

Soon after that, PokerBaazi CEO Navkiran Singh took to social media to disclose the cancelation of what was to be the first-ever National Poker Series (NPS). The series was to run from April 30 to May 5 at Casino Pride 2. Adding to the sad news was Adda52’s announcement regarding the cancelation of the DPT April Edition.

Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang also banned all domestic tourists’ entry into the northeastern state while also closing all the educational institutes, discos, cinema halls, gyms, melas, and casinos.

At the time that these announcements were made, the true extent of the devastation that this virus eventually caused, and is still causing, was neither nor could have been pre-empted. The states that went into lockdown did so, thinking that they would be able to open their respective tourism industries soon. Most of the live stops, like the NPS, DTPX, and DPT, were initially postponed, with the brands believing that as soon as the curve was flattened, life would return to normal, and live poker would be back on the circuit.

But as the next few weeks sadly revealed, there was more bad news in store for the live poker industry and the world, in general.

Lockdown Fever: Online Poker Registers Record-Breaking Turnouts

Right after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the nationwide lockdown on March 19, online poker saw a surge in participation. As we said before, online poker was already on the up and up in India. With live poker out of the picture for the foreseeable future, it gained unprecedented traction almost overnight.

Before the pandemic, the first few days of the week tended to attract less traffic. In turn, brands also offered relatively conservative MTT guarantees on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, compared to the weekend. However, once the pandemic-induced lockdown came into effect, even the marquee tourneys hosted on the first three days of the week began comfortably crushing the advertised guarantees!

A case in point was India’s biggest online tournament to-date, PokerBaazi’s ₹5 Crores GTD EndBoss. When the ambitious tournament was announced during the January edition of the 2020 BPT, reaching 5,000 entries had seemed like a tall task. But with the pandemic in place and the virtual felts exploding with action, the EndBoss comfortably amassed a record-breaking 5,847 entry-field.

Looking at the meteoric rise in online traffic, several brands hosted massive guaranteed tourneys. In fact, there came a point where Spartan Poker was hosting a Millionaire tourney almost every weekend.

The pandemic-induced lockdown also made way for many first-time series such as Spartan Poker’s FTS, while existing series like the IOPC and AOPS kept getting bigger and bigger.

We will do a more in-depth analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on online poker in the third and final segment of this feature series.

Moving On: WSOP Hosts 1st Ever 2020 WSOP Online Series

With the global pandemic raging on, all prominent live poker brands decided to postpone or cancel their live stops. Brands like the World Poker Tour (WPT), Asian Poker Tour (APT), Asia Poker League (APL), Triton Poker, Winamax Poker Tour, and Irish Open were quick to call off their live series once it was clear that COVID-19 wasn’t just a passing phase. But the most prominent and richest live poker series in the world, the WSOP, waited quite a while before making the announcement.

After the Governor of Nevada, Steve Sisolak shut down all the casinos in the state in mid-March, it was pretty clear that the 2020 WSOP was not going to happen, at least not from its scheduled starting date of May 26. Still, no word came from the brand. But with the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino closing its doors and the official venue of the WSOP no longer available, the writing was on the wall. The question across everyone’s mind was, is the WSOP going to be postponed, or would it be canceled altogether?

WSOP broke its silence in April and finally confirmed that the summer series would be postponed and held in the fall of 2020. However, it wasn’t meant to be. The COVID-19 cases in the US continued to rise, making the possibility of hosting a live series in America impossible. In such a situation, a fall series was also out of the picture. Ultimately in June, the WSOP announced that it would be moving the annual series online by hosting its inaugural 2020 WSOP Online Series from July 1 to September 6 on WSOP.com and the GGPoker Network.

Moving the world’s biggest poker series online was an enormous impetus to the industry. While the tournaments hosted on WSOP.com was available only to players geo-located inside Nevada and New Jersey, the tournaments on GGPoker and Natural8 catered to a global player pool.

In 2019, about 100 Indians attended the WSOP, the most-massive Indian participation in the series. But with the WSOP shifting to the virtual felts and the hassle of buying plane tickets, securing a visa, and booking hotels out of the way, Indian participation increased ten-fold.

Well, the result is there for everyone to see. While ‘Mandovi’ was the sole Indian to win a bracelet in Event #64: $840 Turbo Bounty NLHE for $234,433 (~₹1.76 Crore), multiple Indians posted final table finishes. The notable ones were ‘M26GreenWood’, who finished runner-up for $586,157 (~₹4.38 Crores) in Event #63: $500 Mini Main Event and ‘Alex_52’, who placed second in Event #52: $1,000 NLHE for $207,190 (~₹1.55 Crores).

All in all, the first-ever WSOP Online series was a phenomenal success! The series broke multiple records, with the Main Event registering 5,802 entries (which included 3,470 unique players) to collect a record-shattering $27,559,500 prize pool for an online tournament!

A Glimmer of Hope: Is a Revival Possible?

What had initially started out as a 30-day lockdown got extended to months. During that time, online poker in India soared to greater heights, but things started to calm down a couple of months later. The usual overlays on the first two days of the week began to happen again.

The online poker sector enjoyed an extended phase of success, but as the saying goes, “nothing lasts forever.” As we entered the final few months of the year, the traffic on the virtual felts began to dwindle down. Online poker operators continued to offer big guarantee tournaments and series, but perhaps due to a sense of exhaustion, fields just weren’t as vast as they used to be.

Just around the time that online poker began to lose steam, the Goa government gave casinos the green light to commence operations from November 1. At that time, we had reached out to the poker room operators of two of the biggest casinos in Goa, Vasim Rozani (Big Daddy Poker Room Operator) and Manish J. Adnani (Business Head – Poker at Delta Corp). Both had assured their respective casinos had undertaken stringent measures to ensure their customers’ health and safety. However, by the end of the month, news came through that more than two dozen staffers of a prominent offshore casino had tested positive. The local government had reportedly found many tourists not following the safety health guidelines.

Moving to the other casino state, Sikkim, Casino Deltin Denzong in Gangtok hosted the High Altitude Poker Festival from December 25 to 30. Unlike in Goa, no cases of COVID-19 were reported after the cash game festival concluded. Safe to say that the event organizers and casino operators had taken the necessary precautions to ensure that guests adhere to the safeguards.

So, what is the present scenario? Well, casinos are open now, and some have even revived their poker rooms with two or more tables running. But hosting a full-fledged tournament series that will attract massive fields looks out of the question anytime soon.

In conclusion, 2020 has been really bad for live poker, not just in India but across the globe. However, things seem to be looking up with news of effective vaccines making the headlines. Live poker has low-key started up again, but tournaments may still take a while to come back.