Gaming Life Expo to Become Poker Palooza

One of the festivities that are used to help kick off the Main Event over the last couple of years has been the Gaming Lifestyle Expo. The expo brings in vendors from all over the country as well as online poker sites to either sell products or to give away various types of SWAG to bribe people to check them out.

This year, the Gaming Life Expo has been repackaged and will return as the 2009 Poker Palooza. This summer will be the inaugural Poker Palooza and will be held in the Rio Pavilion from July 2nd through 5th. According to Ty Stewart, the WSOP’s Marketing Director, “It’s going to be part trade show, part carnival, all fun.”

With the repackaging, the Poker Palooza will focus more on fun and social interaction in addition to the different exhibits that are normally the highlights of the Gaming Lifestyle Expo. There will be a “Bad Beat Bar” setup for players to share experiences of how they were knocked out of the main event. There will also be several “interactive zones” setup for players and spectators. Some of these include poker media, WSOP history, “Lap of Luxury,” and even an arcade.

Several WSOP Main Event Champions will be around to sign autographs and a great time is expected to be had by all. This repackaging of the Poker Palooza has brought the “Gaming Life Expo” a long way from the controversy of two years ago. Two years ago, the Expo was very sexually oriented to the point that many families were embarrassed to walk through the area. In 2007, players had to walk through the Expo to get to the Amazon Room. It was criticized as being lewd and not family friendly. The 2008 Expo was held separate from the Amazon Room in the Pavillion with a bit of a facelift. The 2009 Expo should go a long way to change and hopefully eliminate from memory the debacle of 2007.

For more information on Poker Palooza, go to http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/poker-palooza/.