Calvin Anderson, the Las Vegas-based professional poker player, emerged as the winner of the 2023 World Poker Tour (WPT) Prime Championship. The prestigious event took place at Wynn Las Vegas and saw a staggering 10,512 entries that helped generate a prize pool of $10,196,640.

This year’s Prime Championship enjoyed much more interest when compared to its debut in 2022. For comparison, the 2022 WPT Prime Championship attracted a field of 5,430 entries. In other words, this year, the number of participants nearly doubled, helping generate a staggering prize pool that surpassed $10 million.

Emerging as the winner, Anderson collected the first-place prize of $1,386,280. Moreover, the poker pro earned secured the WPT Prime Championship trophy. The recent win represented Anderson’s first WPT win and also granted him a seat in the 2024 WPT World Championship.

During the 2023 WPT Prime Championship, the poker pro met other notable poker veterans, including Frankie Cucchiara who finished in 52nd place, Daniel Lowery, a 14-time gold ring winner, who ranked 18th as well as Steven Jones, the 2023 WSOP Main Event runner-up who ranked 10th place during the recent tournament.

There was a total of six players that endured to reach the Prime Championship’s final table. With Anderson emerging as the winner, Aaron Pinson finished second, collecting a $910,000 prize. The third place belonged to Jay Lu, who took home $675,000, while Jon Glendinning ranked fourth, taking home $505,000. At the 2023 WPT Prime Championship, Bob Buckenmayer ranked fifth, taking home $380,000, while Valeriy Pak finished sixth, collecting a $290,000 prize. Just outside of the top six was Mukul Pahuja, who finished in seventh place.

The Recent Win Grows the Poker Pro’s Total Live Earnings

The WPT Prime Championship rounded off the 2023 WPT Prime season and comes ahead of the 2024 WPT Prime season. The new WPT Prime season starts on January 26, 2024, and is expected to attract more seasoned poker professionals.

Adam Pliska, WPT’s CEO, shared his excitement about Anderson’s recent win. “The astounding increase in the WPT Prime Championship exceeded expectations, and further fortifies the event as a pillar of the WPT World Championship festival at Wynn Las Vegas,” he explained in a statement released by WPT on Wednesday. Finally, Pliska congratulated Anderson for his “monumental win.”

The 2023 WPT Prime Championship win further grows the total live earnings for the Las Vegas-based poker pro. According to the Hendon Mob, Anderson’s total live earnings are close to $5 million or $4,961,841 to be exact. His latest win represents the best live cash prize collected by the poker pro throughout his professional career.

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The World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championship saw 973 players enter Day 1c on Thursday, bringing the total number of entries to 2,312. Day 1d is set to take place on Friday and is expected to attract enough players for the tournament to hit the $40 million guarantee.

PokerNews reported that the first three Day 1 events ended up attracting fewer players than expected but the Friday session is expected to make up for that. In order for that to happen, it would need approximately 1,800 more players to register.

Registration will close late Friday evening, meaning that there is a whole day of anticipation remaining. The prize pool will be announced following the conclusion of the registration period.

Several Players Collected over a Million Chips

The global tournament has been attracting tons of players and is poised to be one of the most exciting poker tournaments ever. The first few Day 1 events already saw a few professionals finish with huge stacks of chips.

Kyle Ho, Chance Kornuth and Hossein Ensan, for example, all surpassed a million chips, bagging 1.21 million, 1.13 million and 1.1 million chips respectively. In the meantime, Jeff Hakim almost reached a million, bagging 998,000 on Day 1a of the event.

In the meantime, a number of notable professionals failed to qualify for Day 2. This included Phil Hellmuth, also known as the Poker Brat. However, Hellmuth and other unlucky players will have one final shot at advancing on Day 1d this Friday.

The participation of such players is expected to further bolster the Friday numbers, allowing the tournament to hit its goals and $40 million guarantee.

Costello Won the WPT Ladies Championship

Speaking of WTP events, Lisa Costello just won the World Poker Tour’s Ladies Championship, taking home $85,297, a trophy and the title of “champ.” This is not her first win at a big event but she still described her emotion about the victory as an “incredible feeling.”

The final table saw Costello face other women’s poker powerhouses, such as Kathy Stahl, Chris Read, Aylar Lie and Ada Lang.

Costello’s victory surprised poker fans considering her long recent hiatus.

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GeoComply will deploy its full suite of enhanced fraud detection and prevention measures to ensure that, as WPT Global continues to expand globally, players will be protected. The company will focus on ensuring that player data from across 85 countries around the world is protected and that ill-meaning players’ efforts to cheat or disrupt gameplay for others are foiled.

WPT Gets Security Beefed Up

The idea is to root out any bad actors who may try to sully WPT’s reputation by cheating and putting honest players at a disadvantage. Commenting on this partnership, A5 Labs head of security John Andress said that fraudsters and cheats have been an almost indelible part of the online poker community since day one.

However, things have got much better and not least thanks to the deployment of powerful anti-cheating and anti-fraud tools. Andress was optimistic about the future of WPT Global, a client to A5, which he believes will be able to move past cheaters and ensure a level playing field for all:

As our customer WPT Global embarks on a new journey, we were determined to invest in the tools needed to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated criminals. Investing in GeoComply’s market-leading technology will keep us one step ahead of the cheats no matter where they are based.

A5 Labs head of security John Andress

WPT Global has been going strong with more than 50 countries where the online poker site is available. The website has been up and running for almost a full year now, with an average of 15,000 daily active users, making it one of the most significant poker networks worldwide.

Tested in Practice, Guaranteed to Bring Results

A5 Labs has been working to help its partner actively tackle fraud and cheating so that the WPT brand can be synonymous with trust and fairness. While A5 Labs has been doing well on its own, investing in machine learning and data science solutions to tackle cheating, it will now leverage GeoComply’s unique expertise to take aim at bot groups and other fraudulent groups that may be acting in concert.

GeoComply VP sales and customer experience Mark Blunder said that he was delighted to see the opportunity to assist A5 Labs and WPT Global to counteract fraudulent practices in the global online poker community. Blunden added that the technology and solutions that GeoComply was able to deploy were in fact already tested and had been proven to succeed.

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