Online poker players in Canada's most populous province, Ontario, will officially begin to play on a World Series of Poker-branded site beginning Friday, September 30. The real-money launch of the site was initially set for April, but was delayed for various regulatory and reasons, including the need to finalize all protocols with iGaming Ontario.
When launched next Friday, WSOP.ca will become the sixth online site, or "skin", and the fourth online network, officially serving Ontario, which includes Toronto and several other large cities. Ontario's online poker players already have access to platforms from BetMGM, 888Poker, partypoker, bwin, and PokerStars. The BetMGM, partypoker, and bwin sites operate as skins on a single network powered by partypoker software, while 888poker and PokerStars, like WSOP.ca, offer standalone sites.
The soon-to-launch WSOP.ca offering is a replacement site of sorts for GGPoker. Ontario's online players were allowed to continue playing on GGPoker's global site while WSOP.ca's regulatory hurdles were negotiating. GGPoker has been the WSOP's online-poker software partner for several years, and that relationship will continue in Ontario.
What happens on September 30 for GGPoker's existing Ontario-based players is a porting process to the new WSOP.ca (Ontario) site. The forced migration, including players' balances, will require a new user client to be downloaded and installed. The GGPoker Ontario migrants will have a much smaller player pool to access, since they'll now be able to play only other Ontarians rather than compete against GGPoker players worldwide.
The new Ontario-only download is already available on the WSOP.ca site, and is set to run on both traditional computers and smart devices.
WSOP.ca has also confirmed that GGPoker brand ambassador Daniel Negreanu will represent the new Ontario-only site. Negreanu is a Toronto native and prominently touts his Canadian heritage, though he moved to Las Vegas some years ago, to further pursue his poker career, while also becoming an American citizen.
Featured image source: Haley Hintze
