The World Poker Tour and ELC Gaming Unite for an E-Sports/Poker Festival

Ourgame’s World Poker Tour and ELC Gaming celebrated the first Poker/E-sports festival.

Tying poker and e-sports together into a single event just makes sense. There is a lot of crossover appeal, and many well-known poker players started out as e-sportsmen, notably Doug Polk and Elky. 

So when the owner of Allied E-sports, Ourgame, bought World Poker Tour, it was only a matter of time before this union became a reality.

The event was the first in a partnership between the two Ourgame brands, Allied’s ELC Gaming and the World Poker Tour and it took place at the Holland Casino in Amsterdam. 

Inside the casino players could enjoy the usual events in the poker series while those on the outside could check out “Big Betty”.

And what a dame she is!

"Big Betty", is ELC Gaming’s 18-wheel mobile e-sports arena. With a width of 12,3m, a length of 21,5m, and height of 5,2m it features a fully equipped build-in production studio for TV-Distribution and Live Streaming. It includes a control room, commentator booth and stage moderators for expert panels. 

The event took place October 9 to 15. It featured a variety of poker and e-sport games but the highlights were the WPT Netherlands Main Event and ELC Gaming's Overwatch Legend Series final, which were won by Ioannis Konstas and ENCE E-sports, respectively. 

How did the attendees react to these two worlds meeting each other?

Going by social media, they apparently didn't react to it at all. 

Beyond the few curious onlookers pictured above, social media activity doesn’t reflect much of a crossover between the e-sport and poker audiences during the event. At least not in the way that Ourgame probably expected.  

However, this is unlikely to dissuade them from pushing for future WPT/ELC Gaming  events like this one.

Before the event, Ourgame International CEO Frank Ng said:

“This is an inspiring time in both poker and e-sports, the two mindsports that have only begun to realize their enormous collaboration potential. With prominent businesses in poker and e-sports, Ourgame is uniquely positioned to raise the bar with a new breed of events across the globe to give all of our players more of what they want. Backed by the support of Ourgame, the WPT looks forward to this being the first of many collaborations between the World Poker Tour and ELC Gaming.”

We’ve heard from him, now we want to hear from you. Are e-sports and poker really that compatible? Or is Ourgame overstating their connection for the sake of corporate synergy? Let us know in the comments!