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👤RakeAdvisory 🕔2019-05-30
Heartland Poker Tour

The Heartland Poker Tour is a major poker tour in the United States, but most important of all, it is also an international TV program that airs all year round. It was started in 2005 by Greg Lang and Todd Anderson and its tagline is “Real People, Unreal Money”.

And this is quite true because thanks to its low buy ins, almost anyone can join. Compared to other major tournaments like the World Series of Poker which has buy ins close to $50,000, The Heartland Poker Tour has entry fees of just around $1,650. 

It was initially just a regional TV show that was aired on televisions in the Midwest area, but as poker became more popular worldwide, so does the show. It became so popular that it’s now aired by televisions in Europe, the United States, The Middle East and also the Caribbean area. So far there were 9 seasons and 230 episodes.

The US tour takes place in various cities of the US in states like Michigan, Indiana, Oklahoma, Colorado, etc. and at each location there are filmed two episodes of one hour each. Then the commentators are analyzing the game of the best players in each main event. From Season 1 up to Season 8, the commentators were Fred Bevill and Chris Hanson, and starting with Season 9, Chris was replaced by Maria Ho.

Also starting with Season 9, the final table was increased from six to nine players. A player can get into The Heartland Poker Tour either by buying the entry (which is a larger fee) or by qualifying. The top 10% or the first 30 places (whichever is greater) will then win prize money. 

The biggest winners of all time in The Heartland Poker Tour are:

- Craig Casino winning almost $800,000

- Reginald Shawn Robers winning more than $500,000

- Alexander Greenblatt also with earnings of more than $500,000

- Lance Garcia - $475,000

- Greg Raymer - $446,217

The list goes on and on, and on the official website of the tour you can actually find the all-time money list with the top 5,505 players. On this website you can also find many other useful information, including all the previous results and the events that are about to come. 

There is also a category dedicated to the player of the year, and this time the winner was Aaron Johnson. He receives a package that includes the equivalent of $10,000 in buy-ins at the Main event next year. In 2017 the winner was Ari Engel, while in 2016 Ryan Gregor. On the POY category on the website you will also find detailed standings for the previous years.

Even though you missed some of the episodes, on the TV category and “Watch Full Episodes” sub-category you will be able to watch all of them, absolutely for free. In case you don’t have the time to watch all 230 episodes, you can check out the “Episode Guide” which mentions all the dates, the locations and the prize pools…so you can watch just the ones that interest you the most. 

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