ClubWPT Gold, a sweepstakes poker platform, is out of Nevada. The platform announced on Thursday that it is ceasing operations in the state in response to state regulatory action, giving players until September 28 to use their Chips and until October 2 to redeem. After that, Nevada goes dark.
The shutdown reduces ClubWPT Gold to 41 states, down from 42. It doesn’t directly affect the December WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. That event is live poker. Nevada’s regulatory action against the sweepstakes platform has no jurisdiction over a physical tournament floor.
Nevada’s Ban and What It Actually Covers
Nevada is not a new battleground for sweepstakes poker. The state passed SB 256 in 2025, broadening its unlicensed gambling statutes to cover dual-currency platforms without naming the model. ClubWPT Gold operated there under its Hand Analysis structure, arguing the restructured product sat outside the statute. Nevada regulators disagreed. The announcement did not say which regulation triggered the action.
What Nevada does have is WSOP Online, the only licensed real-money online poker product in the state. It is part of the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement alongside New Jersey and Delaware. For players who were using ClubWPT Gold as their main online poker option in Nevada, that is now the regulated alternative.
There is no sweepstakes replacement. Every Nevada player who was using ClubWPT Gold as their primary online outlet now has one legitimate option left, and WSOP Online is almost certainly celebrating. That platform may also be changing hands: the Fertitta family’s $17.6 billion acquisition of Caesars Entertainment received shareholder approval this week, and WSOP is part of that deal.
The December Championship Is Not Affected
The $400 Super Gold Million runs December 10 to 14 at Wynn Las Vegas with a $3,000,000 guarantee and a mystery bounty format. WPT executive tour director Matt Savage confirmed it will be an exclusively live tournament. No sweepstakes law in Nevada or anywhere else governs what happens on that floor. Players from every state and most of the world can buy in directly or qualify through live satellites.
ClubWPT Gold is also adding $1,000,000 in mystery bounty cash to the $10,400 WPT World Championship, which runs December 13 to 20. Both events proceed as announced. Nevada players cannot use the ClubWPT Gold platform to qualify online. That path is gone. The tournament itself is not. ClubWPT Gold has not signaled any retreat from those commitments. The platform expects players from 41 states to compete on the live felts at Wynn at year-end, and one state’s regulatory action does not change that picture.
The open question is whether the Nevada exit has any downstream effect on the $3,000,000 guarantee. ClubWPT Gold has been running significant overlay across its online series this year. The March Gold Million drew 11,392 entries on a $1,000,000 guarantee. The Crown Series ran $7,000,000 across 33 events. The Summer of Gold ran with a $50,000,000 guarantee across five weeks. None of those numbers suggest a platform struggling to fill guarantees. But Nevada represents a market gap, and WPT has not said whether the live guarantee is tied to online platform revenue.
A Difficult Year Gets Another Entry
The Nevada exit is the third significant setback for ClubWPT Gold in 2026. Earlier this year, its branded patches were caught up in the WSOP’s new patch policy, which restricted unapproved brands from feature tables. Before that, a chip-dumping scandal at a 2025 WSOP Millionaire Maker satellite tied to a ClubWPT Gold-sponsored seat led to lifetime bans for the two players involved.
The platform continues to operate in 41 states, with Phil Ivey, Doug Polk, and Ethan “Rampage” Yau as ambassadors. After New York moved against sweepstakes platforms, ClubWPT Gold re-entered the state in January 2026 under its Hand Analysis model. It stayed in California under a nine-day-per-month structure after AB 831 passed. Nevada, where it operated under that same restructured model, is now off the list.
Oklahoma’s sweepstakes ban takes effect November 1. Florida’s AG lawsuit against VGW is active. The legislative wave that hit eleven states this year is not finished. ClubWPT Gold has navigated it better than most operators, but Nevada is a real loss for a platform that had been adding states, not losing them.
