Collaboration Pokerclubs 2021

Belgian Clubs join hands together

In 2020 different initiatives were taken by Pokahnights (Antwerp), Poker Belgique (Soignies), PKR4U (Brussels), Poker Party(Hasselt) and Liège Poker Club (Liège) even during the Corona era to keep pushing club poker. In 2021 they will keep on doing so and there might even be a chance they will all integrate into 1 big club with 5 different rooms.

2020, a very tough but constructive year

When back in March 2020 the Corona pandemic struck our country nobody could then imagine that it would cause the entire live clubpoker sector to be shut down a complete year. Still, in about 2 months we’re actually there, locked and closed for an entire year. Evidentially a devastating situation for all live poker clubs.

Luckily this also made clubs talk more to each other and all of a sudden even some long running dossiers seem to get taken off the stack and finally looked at. On this very moment talks are ongoing about creating 1 big club with different rooms. That’s one way to connect the different clubs but also the different players of these clubs.

Online action

The BPPC, CLBPP and smaller OFC2C were the first few collaborations that really gave us a taste for more. In November 2020 we started out with the Belgian Poker Players Challenge on PokerStars. This was a series of 13 events for the individual poker player. Next to the BPPC a more experimental concept was tested also, the Champions League for Teams, and on this very moment the OFC2C Challenge is coming to an end, an Open Face Chinese poker ranking challenge.

In 2021 we want to sharp-tune all these different concepts and we start out with streamlining the names of the concepts a little bit. So we are going for Belgian Poker Players (BPP) with each time a different extension:

• Belgian Poker Players Challenge (BPPC) – Tournament series on PokerStars for individual players
• Belgian Poker Players Teams (BPPT) – Championship also on PokerStars but only for teams
• Belgian Poker Players OFC (BPPO) – Open Face Chinese poker concept in the Days of Poker application

A good mix of 3 concepts that will be unleashed once again on the general public in the upcoming months. Sunday 24th of January we already go ahead with the BPPC 2021 – season 01. During the month of March we’ll go for another round in the BPPT and a new OFC challenge is to be expected near April.

Live action

BPPL? Oh yeah, one would almost forget but this year we also plan to play some poker live, strangely enough. Whether this will take place at your usual and favourite poker club, or in a totally new concept, we will keep for ourselves for a little bit longer. But what we can say is that we are definitely planning a Belgian Poker Players live League, so in short the BPPL. We are planning 5 stops in the poker clubs mentioned above for a whole day of live poker. The exact details of this 4th concept together with all the dates of the event days will probably be published around the month of March, when hopefully things will look a little more brighter concerning the Covid pandemic in Belgium.

So it is with great courage and a whole lot of healthy poker appetite that we will try to continue the struggle for a couple more months and we look forward to meet you in person somewhere on a poker table, or anywhere else for that matter, in this new year!

Didier Van Doren – Poker Party
Eric Thirion – Liège Poker Club
Kristof De Deken – Pokahnights
Serge Halpern – PKR4U
Leandro Gaone – Poker Belgique