With 2024 drawing to a close, a new year in Canadian poker is dawning. The 2025 season in Canada promises to look a lot like 2024 in broad strokes, but the new year will bring some fine-level detail changes to various big series across the country.
This won’t be a comprehensive look at everything happening in Canada for 2025 as that would be too large of a task. Instead, I’ll look at the big tours and poker hot spots across the country for a taste of what’s to come in 2025.
The big games in Canada will, once again, likely come from the World Series of Poker Circuit events, at least in terms of volume. Last year saw 6 WSOP-C events across the country, split evenly between east and west, and it looks likely that 2025 will see at least 4 and likely more.
Elsewhere, the Pure Poker Tour looks to be streamlining its operations with some minor venue and event changes, while Casino Regina and Ace Casino Airport look to be hitting 2025 with similar plans to 2024.
The Circuit in Canada
There is no rest for the degens on the Canadian poker scene as the new year gets into full swing right off the bat with the January edition of WSOP-C Calgary at Deerfoot Inn & Casino. The Jan series is always a massive festival, with the 2024 version coming in as the biggest Circuit event on Canadian soil for last year.
Jan 2024 saw more than $5.8 million in prizes and there’s every chance the 2025 edition could be $6 million+ considering the year-over-year growth:
Considering the trend, it looks pretty clear that if the growth continues on pace, the coming series will cap $6 million in total prizes. The YoY increase between 2023 and 2024 was about 9%, and even predicting a smaller growth rate of 5%, 2025 still looks to come in at around $6.1 million in total prizes.
WSOP-C in 2025
To date, the Jan series in Calgary is the only Canadian date set in stone for 2025 series dates. One Circuit that won’t be returning for 2025 is the May tilt in Calgary, though it still looks likely that Calgary will host two Circuits in the 2025 calendar year.
While May is off the table, it looks like some new fall dates are being discussed, with predicted timeframes for October. Poker.Pro is the exclusive live reporting for WSOP-C series at Deerfoot Inn & Casino in Calgary, so look for our live coverage of the January series starting Jan 8, 2025.
It also seems likely that the hub of poker in eastern Canada, Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, QC, will also return to the Circuit with at least a couple of series in the year and given the success of the first-ever WSOP-C Toronto in 2024, organizers must be eyeing the The 6ix for another tilt.
Pure Poker Tour
Outside of the Circuit, which set a record for the Alberta market in its first outing in 2022 and never looked back, the Pure Poker Tour provides some of the biggest action in Alberta, the western hub of Canadian poker. Run by Pure Canadian Gaming, the PPT runs multiple tournaments per year with previous years seeing six series split between Calgary and Edmonton.
2025 will bring a few changes to Pure and the PPT as the business was sold in late 2024 to bring the company under new ownership. Onex, the previous owner through its subsidiary ONCAP, announced the sale to Indigenous Gaming Partners, a business collaboration of five Nova Scotia-based First Nations, on Dec 10.
According to the tournament director for the PPT, Joanne Jost, the new ownership change doesn’t look to be making big changes off the jump. “It’s business as usual,” she said in an online discussion on the issue, though she noted it’s still early days and 2025 could still see some changes as a result of the new ownership.
There were already a few minor changes to the 2025 PPT in the works before the change in casino management. In an attempt to consolidate operations a bit, The PPT will be dropping the Calgary dates in 2025 to run 5 series split between the two Edmonton properties.
The opening games of the 2025 season kick off in early February at Pure Casino Edmonton (Argyle) with four more dates to follow throughout the year. The main difference this year is the loss of games in Calgary as well as the removal of the spring mini-series that typically ran in Mar/Apr in previous years.
Otherwise, it looks like Jost’s prediction of “business as usual” is accurate for now and fans should look for our exclusive live coverage of the PPT in the coming year. With new ownership, however, players should be prepared for strategic changes from the new management as the year wears on and they get more familiar with the new business and their long-term goals for it.
Poker Across Canada in 2025
While the WSOP-C and the PPT represent the bulk of tournament poker, at least in western Canada, there is a lot of action going on elsewhere as well. Quebec and Saskatchewan will also play host to big games and series throughout 2025 with the possibility of another Ontario stop as well.
WPT & Playground
The other big name to grace Canadian felts this year will almost certainly be the World Poker Tour. The WPT typically runs a couple of Championship events at Playground Poker Club every year, and there have been no hints of changes to that for 2025.
2024 saw two full WPT events with a WPT Global-sponsored series to kick off 2024. While the WPT has yet to make any announcements for dates in Canada in the coming year, it seems likely an event or two will run in Kahnawake in the new year. Playground is about more than just WPT events however, with the club also hosting WSOP-C events as well as its own series.
The Playground action will get going early in 2025 with the World Cup of Cards heating up January in Quebec starting on the 22nd. With 16 events over 12 days of action, games run until Feb 2 with Mystery Bounty, PKO, and PLO games on the schedule.
Casino Regina
While Alberta and Quebec are unquestionably the poker hotspots in Canada since the pandemic, Saskatchewan also has it’s share of tournament poker. The venerable Station Poker Classic and Harvest Poker Classic have been running for decades and are well-loved locally with players traveling from across the country for eye-watering single-day tournament prize pools.
Recent years saw the addition of a third series in between the Station, which usually runs in the spring, and the Harvest, which runs in the fall. The Diamond Poker Classic runs in June as an antidote to the hustle and bustle of Vegas during WSOP time.
All three series look to make their return in 2025 and recent years have seen huge growth in the numbers for these games with players able to pocket $150k or more for a single-day win. For Canadians who haven’t yet experienced Casino Regina, housed in a converted historic CN Rail station, a trip to the Saskatchewan capital in 2025 may well be in order.
Ace Casino Airport
Ace Casino Airport looks set to continue its Grande tradition with 3 more series in 2025 with dates that should be similar to 2024 in March, August, and December. While the attendance of the Grande series tends to be more modest than other local Alberta games, the casino provides one of the more comfortable poker experiences in the province with excellent chairs throughout the poker room and perhaps the best quality-for-the-money dining menu in the city.
Ace Casino Airport also has the advantage of being very convenient for travelers to Cowtown. Located just moments from the Calgary International Airport, travelers to Calgary or transiting the city with a layover can be at a table with chips in play within 30 minutes of exiting the airport security checks. That makes it a great place for business travelers through Calgary to add a bit of poker to their trip while still catching all their flights.
Super Stack Action at Deerfoot
While Deerfoot Inn & Casino will start and end their 2025 season with WSOP-C events, the facility is running a total of four series in the coming year. While May has traditionally been a WSOP-C date over the past three years, the coming year will see it revert to the Spring Super Stack while the August dates will return to Summer Super Stack action after the unusual and unique WSOP-C Aug 2024.
Deerfoot is among the best places in the country for a whole experience. With an attached hotel, players don’t even need to leave the facility to get from their rooms to the casino floor and poker room, but the views from the rooms may well entice them to get outside and look around. With stunning views of the Rocky Mountains and downtown Calgary, Deerfoot is conveniently located for excursions across the city, into the prairies, or into some of the most picturesque mountainscapes in the world.
Hot Poker Up North in 2025
2025 looks to be another banner year in the growing Canadian poker scene. This wasn’t intended to be a look at every game planned in 2025 — not only would that be a massive undertaking, in many cases, 2025 dates haven’t even been officially announced.
Rather, this has been a quick look at some of the highlights to look for in the coming year on the Canadian felt, but rest assured there will be local action happening across the country. While official live tournament poker left the province of Manitoba just prior to the pandemic, several robust local leagues have picked up the slack, including the Northern Stars Poker Tour.
Players from around the country have found ways to organize their games and among the most active and long-running is the Die Hard Poker League in Surrey, British Columbia. Since 2005, Die Hard has run an annual series to end their home game season in September.
Similar leagues and series will be running locally across the country in 2025 and will be announced as the year rolls on. Stay tuned here and with your local casino and community for all the 2025 action and keep your eyes peeled for live coverage from events around Alberta and beyond.
