Share 
The World Poker Tour announced last week that it will bring its Prime tour to Texas for the first time later this year.
WPT Prime will run at The Lodge Card Club in Round Rock from Sept. 28 to Oct. 13.
Full schedule details are still being finalized, but the $1,100 WPT Prime Lodge Championship will take place from Oct. 9-13. It will feature a $1 million guaranteed prize pool and will award a WPT Prime trophy to the winner.
Satellites and additional tournaments, including a $400 buy-in “Half Milly” with a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool, will run leading up to the WPT Prime championship event.
Lodge and WPT a natural fit
Located 20 minutes outside Austin, The Lodge Card Club has been one of the most esteemed cardrooms in Texas since opening in 2017. Its notoriety grew when Doug Polk, Brad Owen, and Andrew Neeme purchased the venue in 2022.
Earlier this year, Nik Airball and Ethan “Rampage” Yau became investors. The Lodge expanded to a second location in San Antonio last year, purchasing and rebranding the former Rounders Card Club.
Four of the five owners are also ClubWPT Gold ambassadors, WPT’s sweepstakes online poker website. Only Airball does not have an affiliation with the sweepstakes site.
Polk, Owen, Neeme, and Rampage all have significant followings. The link between their WPT affiliations and Lodge ownership makes tremendous sense to cross-promote, agreed WPT CEO Adam Pliska.
“We are thrilled to partner with The Lodge for the first time and bring the WPT experience to the heart of Texas. The Lodge is a standout venue with an incredible community of passionate poker players.
A second ‘first’ time in Texas for WPT
Texas poker has thrived for years in an unregulated environment, operating in a legal “gray” area as social clubs. Much earlier along the timeline, the WPT brought its WPTDeepStacks tour, which ultimately rebranded into Prime, to Houston’s Freerolls Poker Club in 2018.
The WPTDeepStacks Houston event drew 790 entries over four starting flights. Texas poker was not as widespread seven years ago, when the event was the first of its kind in the state.
Several other tours have run numerous successful stops across the Lone Star State in recent years, including the PokerGO Tour and PokerAtlas Tour. PokerGO has run events in Houston, while PokerAtlas has had stops in Austin, Dallas, and Houston.
Meanwhile, The Lodge has run only in-house events, though some have amassed prize pools reaching mid-six and seven figures. It has the resources and connections to combine forces and host a WPT event.
This upcoming event promises 1,000 entries worth of prizes for its Main Event. All signs indicate the turnout will well exceed that guarantee, and that the series will be a Texas-sized triumph.
Remaining WPT 2025 schedule
WPT has a full slate of events on the calendar through October, including:
- July 11-17: WPT Venetian ($5,000 buy-in Main Tour)
- Aug. 1-5: WPT Prime Thailand Exhibition
- Aug. 13-18: WPT Cyprus Championship ($3,500 buy-in Main Tour)
- Aug. 14-19: WPT Prime Taiwan Championship
- Sept. 25-Oct. 1: WPT Australia Championship ($5,500 AUD/$3,600 USD buy-in Main Tour)
- Oct. 9-13: WPT Prime Lodge Championship
- Oct. 24-28: WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship ($5,300 buy-in Main Tour)
