While some countries like to pretend that gambling isn’t a fact of life, some countries actually do the cool thing and embrace it. Mexico is definitely one of the latter, as they will be holding their First National Poker Tournament this coming August 19. The event will run from August 19 to 22 at the Casino Life del Valle in Mexico.

Tournament Details

It’s going to be like no other tournament ever held in Mexico before. It’s going to be grand. It’s going to be epic. It’s going to be all that and more.  Well, hopefully anyway. Compared to the WSOP, it’s going to be pretty small, the tournament only accommodating a maximum of 300 players. Once the field is cropped down to its last 90, it will have reached its semi-finals stage. Among these 90, only 10 will reach the Grand Finals, which will be held on the last day of the tournament, August 22.

Now, people might think that the pacing for this new tournament is abnormally fast. But in truth, if it seems fast, it’s only because they will be using Electronic poker tables. This way, errors and anomalies are avoided, making for a cleaner and smoother tournament. Few tournaments employ such a high tech style of playing, so you can be pretty sure that this one stands above many others. All the players will have a starting chip stack of 10,000 and the level-playing will be 30 minutes in all.

This is an unprecedented event in the history of poker in Mexico, so the people are pretty enthusiastic about it. The fat grand prize also helps a lot too in making the tournament attractive to poker fans.

The Prize

People’s opinions vary on whether fame or fortune is the biggest prize in poker tournaments, but worry not, this tournament will have these two in spades. The grand prize amounts to a pretty nice $78,000 and also a bonus prize of a spot at the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final which will be held this coming 22^nd of September in Argentina. It’s going to be a pretty good jumping off point for any player who wants to make it big in the poker industry. The winner also gets the honor of being the first ever to win in this tournament, since this will, after all, be the inaugural tournament. Hopefully, this tournament will be the first in a series of many.