The Red Hot Poker Tour hosts poker tournaments with no entry fees in Canadian bars and pubs. Every night of the week players can compete to accumulate points which they use to qualify for the end-of-season Tournament of Champions. Twice in the past the TOC winner was rewarded with a seat at Daniel Negreanu's Protege final table.

At the completion of its sixth season, the Tour expanded outside of Ontario for the first time, holding qualifying tournaments in British Columbia. Players can also compete on the internet, as the Red Club Room offers tournaments through PartyPoker.

The Season 7 Tournament of Champions winner was the first champion to be rewarded with a buy-in to a $10,000 tournament, in this case the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. The Season 8 prize was a buy-in to the $10,000 Main Event at the second annual World Poker Tour North American Poker Championship at Fallsview Casino. For Season 10, the winner was given a choice of one of three World Poker Tour tournaments, and wound up playing at the LA Poker Classic.

To start Season 11, Red Hot announced they would be sponsored by the World Poker Tour, and all of its online games would be played at WorldPokerTour.com

Season 12 featured a new sponsor: PartyPoker Over the next three season, with PartyPoker's support, Red Hot will qualify 20 players to play in one of the preliminary events at the 2009 World Series of Poker.

Game play

Tournaments are played at 8-man tables. Each player is given 4000 chips to start: 12 red chips worth 25 each, 7 blues worth 100 each, and 6 greens worth 500 each. Black chips (worth 1000), yellow/pink chips (worth 5000), and purple chips (worth 10000) are all used later in the tournament. In addition, for every five dollars that a player spends at the bar (for food or drink) they receive one white chip. A white chip is equal to the value of the small blind at the time, up until the 500/1000 level, where they are chipped out of play.

Blind structure

The blinds increase every 20 minutes. The blind structure is as follows:

25/50

50/100

100/200

200/400

300/600, with a 100 ante

500/1000, 200

1000/2000, 300

2000/4000, 500

3000/6000, 1000

5000/10000, 2000

etc.

Points

Players receive 25 points for each tournament they play. Additionally, all players who make the final table receive bonus points:

1st place: 1000

2nd place: 700

3rd place: 500

4th place: 400

5th place: 300

6th place: 200

7th place: 125

8th place: 75

Tournament of Champions winners

Season	Date	Location	Champion	Runner-up
1	April 2, 2005	Peel Pub	Jim Graham
2	June 22, 2005	Peel Pub	Leslie Kassa
3	December 11, 2005	Bert & Ernie's	Adam Domenchini	Mike Berger
4	April 1, 2006	Elephant & Castle	Jimmy Herrera	James Reinhart
5	July 15, 2006	Molly Bloom's	Sharmarke Osman	Bob Hopkins
6	November 25, 2006	Keating Channel Pub	Richard Hebert	Rob King
7	March 31, 2007	Montana's	James Reinhart	John Gonzalez
8	July 21, 2007	Montana's	Fred "Banjo" Tierney	Michael Stone
9	December 1, 2007	Montana's	Jennifer Garlicki	Jean-Guy Daigle
10	March 29, 2008	Brick Yard BBQ	Osman Soubra	Bob Clemmer
11	July 26, 2008	Brick Yard BBQ	Gary Biggar	Wayne Desmarais

References

External links

• Official site