Maryland Live! has abruptly announced the cancellation of its upcoming World Poker Tour (WPT) stop scheduled to run in September. The Hanover venue, located between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., planned to host the WPT stop September 15-28, 2021.
Maryland Live! announced the cancellation via social media and an announcement on its WPT-dedicated poker page. The announcement did not mention the pandemic specifically. Instead, it described the cancellation as allowing the venue to "safely host" the WPT stop at a later date:
Whatever replacement dates for the two-week stop are chosen have yet to be announced. Maryland Live! is likely to base that decision on the pandemic's status in the coming weeks and months.
Second straight live WPT stop to be cancelled
The Maryland Live! postponement comes just weeks after Florida's Bestbet Jacksonville cardroom cancelled its planned August stop. The Bestbet stop, another entry in the WPT's Season XIX slate, was originally scheduled for August 13-30, 2021. Its cancellation came amid a huge surge in "Delta" coronavirus cases in northern Florida.
As with Bestbet Jacksonville, Maryland Live! is not shutting down its poker operations, but is instead cancelling only its WPT events. This infers that travel considerations factored into Maryland Live!'s postponement decision. The venue also confirmed that players who had already won satellite entries into the main WPT event will be refunded for the value of their seats.
Maryland Live!'s postponement means that two straight live-poker WPT stops will have been cancelled. The next such live event on the WPT's Season occurs in November. That's the WPT Seminole Rock 'n Roll Poker Open at Hollywood, Florida's Hard Rock Casino.
Meanwhile, the WPT's online series continues to run without interruption. The WPT World Online Championships by partypoker began on August 12 and will run through September 15. The series includes an online main event that begins on August 29 and concludes on September 15. (Full details on the WPT World Online Championships series are available here.) However, the WPT World Online Championships are available only via partypoker's global platform, which currently excludes U.S. players.
Featured image source: Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland
