The 2006 Canadian Open Championship of Poker will take place at the Stampede Casino on the Stampede Grounds in Calgary, Alberta from March 8 to March 12. The championship is a no-limit Texas Hold'em heads-up event and is limited to 128 players who each have to buy in for 5,000 Canadian dollars.
The event is sponsored by VoIP MDU.com, an Internet Phone company. The winner of the Canadian Open will take home a guaranteed $250,000, making the tournament the best paying poker event in Canadian history. The event is also the first Canadian tournament using a heads-up format, where the players are going head to head against each other. The winner will advance to the next round and the loser will be eliminated from the tournament.
The buy-in for the tournament is 5,000 Canadian dollars, but you can also qualify through a satellite event. In the two months leading up to the Championship weekend satellite events will be held in various Canadian cities as well as Beijing and Czechoslovakia. The total prize pool is $535,680. The sixteen top players will receive a prize. The winner of the tourney takes home a guaranteed $250,000.
The Canadian Open will be filmed to be broadcast on a later date. Full details are not available yet but there are plans for a one hour preview and five one hour shows covering the last five rounds of the tournament.
The Canadian Poker Federation has officially endorsed the Canadian Open Championship.
More information: The official Canadian Open website.