Today marks one month since poker was recognized as a mental sport. After more than a decade of intense work and development of the activity, the seal was obtained by the World Poker Federation (WPF), an organization created by the CBTH (Brazilian Confederation of Texas Hold'em), by the Argentine Poker Federation ( Argentine Institute of Sports Poker chaired by Luis Losada) and by the Pan American Sports Poker Confederation (CPPD) to represent poker at IMSA.
The development of the BSOP has a lot to do with this. The IMSA is chaired by the Chinese Madame Zelan Chen, who emphasized welcoming the new member of the entity: "With great satisfaction and great expectations we unanimously approve poker as part of the Mind Sports family," said Chen.
The assembly that validated poker as a sport of the mind included representatives of the world federations of all the other IMSA modalities. At that same meeting, the World Esports Federation was also approved. In other words, from now on both poker and Esports are part of IMSA.
Igor Federal Trafane, who was chosen to be the first president of the WPF, said: “One of the historical demands of our category was that poker be recognized worldwide as a sport. It took us many years of negotiation and work to have a World Poker Federation and for it to be officially recognized by IMSA."
