By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
When it comes to poker, people may imagine a scene from Western films in which chain-smoking culprits wearing a hat and worn-out dark pants and shirts are sitting around a wooden table and playing under dim lights. But that should be considered a past legacy.
Now poker is widely gaining popularity at home and abroad as a sport and favorite pastime.
The first ever world-class poker tournament in the Asia Pacific region is to be held in Seoul late this month with a three-day schedule to meet fast-growing popularity among Korean poker enthusiasts and to gain momentum here.
The PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) will be held from Sept. 28-30 at the Paradise Seoul Casino of Sheraton Walkerhill Hotel located in Seoul.
The APPT tournament is an annual international poker competition, sponsored by an online poker site PokerStars.net.
PokerStars is a U.S.-based free online poker Web site.
It provides users with a variety of online poker games including Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Stud, Razz, HORSE and 7-Card Stud.
``We created this series of world-class poker tournaments for poker tourists who want to experience something exciting and new along with their favorite pastime,'' said Jeffrey Haas, president of APPT, in an e-mail interview with The Korea Times.
``We saw an opportunity to promote Seoul as a unique tourist destination for international poker players who wanted a great poker tournament experience.''
Several world class top-tier players including Joe Hachem, the champion of the world series poker championship in 2005, plan to participate in the tournament.
Texas Hold'em is one of the most popular types of poker especially in North America.
The game has its own rules and structure, compared to the typical ``7-Card Stud'' which is popular among Koreans.
But its unique way of playing adopted for TV viewers has greatly contributed to its growing popularity worldwide.
The APPT allows viewers to see all the cards players have and get an insight into how players think and react in various situations.
Because of this, hundreds of thousands of people gather before TV screens to watch the annual world poker championship broadcasted by ESPN, the sports-only channel in the U.S.
Unfortunately, however, the Seoul tournament will not be televised because the government categorizes poker as gambling and so it is banned from any TV exposure.
Texas Hold'em is gaining popularity in Korea and several online poker Web sites operate here for local players.
A foreigner-only casino in Incheon held an off-line Texas Hold'em tournament last year for the first time in Korea.
The pan-Asia poker tour kicked off last month in Manila, the Philippines, with 255 players coming from 35 countries around the world. The finalists picked up through Seoul and the Manila tournaments will join the APPT Grand Final in Sydney, Australia, in December.
For more information on the APPT Seoul tournament, please visit www.appt.com.