The Heartland Poker Tour is returning to the felt, although no dates or locations are set at this time, according to officials with its parent company, Penn National Gaming.
Eric Schippers, senior VP of public affairs for Penn, says there are no plans to permanently shut down HPT, nor have there ever been any such plans, despite multiple poker community rumors to the contrary.
“We had put everything on hold for now due to COVID,” said Shippers, noting there are no scheduled tournament dates as of now. “We are actively working on potential future plans. We do plan to resume it at some point in the future,” he added.
The HPTPoker.com website and its live blog are both offline, with all its social media accounts dormant and all HPT-specific personnel were terminated by last September. Actions such as these led many poker players and some media outlets to speculate the company was permanently disbanded, with Shippers denying such rumors.
“We have not permanently discontinued (HPT),” Said Shippers.
HPT had two regular staff for its past few years, Jeremy Smith and Korey Stewart. Smith, HPT’s tournament director, was recently hired by the Mid-States Poker Tour (MSPT) for a similar position. Stewart, HPT’s marketing manager, works at the Ameristar St. Charles (MO) poker room. His HPT offices were inside Ameristar St. Charles before Penn acquired HPT as part of its purchase of Pinnacle Gaming.
Smith and Stewart handled all day-to-day HPT operations, from securing locations and staffing, structure sheets, promotions and more. Shippers gave no indication how a future HPT is going to be staffed, nor any potential hiring timeline. (Note: Hold’em Media provided all HPT Main Event live updates for eight seasons before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown took place.)
HPT began in 2005 in Fargo, N.D., with Todd Anderson and Greg Lang as owners, and Fred Bevill at the mic, joined soon by Chris Hanson. Jaymz Larson later joined the commentary team, accompanied at times by the likes of Maria Ho and others.
Thanks to the Wayback Machine, there’s access to an article from the High Plains Reader describing how Anderson and Lang took a shot at putting together a poker TV show in Fargo that became a nationwide tour.
HPT merged with Federated Sports + Gaming in 2011, Annie Duke and Jeffrey Pollock’s failed Epic Poker venture that ended in bankruptcy proceedings less than a year later. Pinnacle Entertainment, then-owners of the Ameristar and Boomtown casinos (among others), gained ownership of HPT and all other FS+G assets via those bankruptcy proceedings, overseeing HPT until it all of Pinnacle’s assets were acquired by Penn Gaming in 2018 for $2.8 billion total, including all casino properties and more.
HPT held hundreds of main events in its history and paid out more than $100 million in prize money. At one time a three-part televised tour shown on a variety of network television stations, more recently the tour was primarily a livestreamed main event with taped single-episodes shown on regional networks.
Players such as Greg Raymer, Ari Engel, Nick Pupillo, Allen Kessler and Aaron Johnson are former HPT players of the year. Craig Casino – nicknamed Mr. HPT – is the tour’s leading money winner, followed by Reginald ‘Shawn’ Roberts, Raymer, Pupillo, Alex Greenblatt, Cord Garcia, Aaron Massey, Nick Davidson, Josh Reichard and Engel in its All-Time Top-10 for earnings.
Dan is the founder of PokerLiveUpdates, a veteran poker tournament reporter who can be found wandering somewhat aimlessly through tournament arenas worldwide. As a founding member of FunTour2.0, he searches for the best in craft beer at all locations in the poker world.
