With The Trial of Wisdom – GOP Taipei 2026 now underway, Somuchpoker sat down with Gods of Poker founder Lloyd Fontillas to talk through the tour’s return to Taiwan , the partnership that underscores the series, and the changes made to bring local players into the mix.

Back in Taipei for a Second Edition

GOP kicked off its year in Taipei back in January , and Fontillas was glad to be returning to CTP Asia Poker Arena for a second edition before the year is out.

Eleven Days, Dozens of Trophies: GOP Taipei 2026 in Review

GOP 2026 / The Coiled Path - GOP Phnom Penh 2026

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Eleven Days, Dozens of Trophies: GOP Taipei 2026 in Review

A full recap of GOP Taipei 2026, from the Main Event win by Chih Wei Fan to the gauntlet battles, Player of the Series race, and what comes next.

2026.01.22

“We kicked off the year here in Taipei, so it’s great to be back for our second edition,” he said. “We’ve made a lot of changes – updated the structures, the events, and the schedule.”

Central to the stop is GOP’s partnership with CTP Club and its founder, David Tsai, a relationship Fontillas describes as both personal and professional. “David is a really good friend, and I’ve had a lot of support from him,” he said. “He’s helped me with my career, and I helped them build CTP too.”

Fontillas praised CTP’s floor team as essential to the GOP Taipei operation

Fontillas pointed to the strength of the local team as a marker of how far the venue has come. “As an international operator, I’ve always brought international floor staff, but coming in here I’ve only brought three imported team to help run the floor – the rest is CTP’s team, and they’re very, very strong at this point,” he said, noting the club’s role hosting the Taiwan Millions Tournament .

“To witness how strong the team has become is something I take pride in, because I helped them train staff and develop poker throughout Taipei.”

Catering to the Local Grinders

The biggest change this time round is the buy-in structure. After feedback from the tour’s first Taipei visit, Fontillas has deliberately built a schedule aimed at local players.

“Last time our buy-ins were set pretty high,” he said. “We still got a lot of support, but we lost the local grinders. The feedback I got was, ‘I wanted to experience GOP, I just couldn’t afford to.’ So this time we’ve come in with smaller buy-ins and daily guarantees so local players can actually experience us.”

Lower buy-ins at GOP Taipei are aimed at bringing local grinders into the action

That means a spread of low-cost daily events – two TWD 5,500 buy-ins plus a TWD 3,500 event each day – alongside a trimmed-back set of multi-day tournaments. The schedule keeps the Main Event, Titan Stack, and Mini Main, and adds a new seven-flight GOP Accumulator built as an evening event.

Fontillas also expanded on the refinement to GOP’s signature Cronus Structure, a change that came directly from player feedback in Manila. If you’re new to the concept, we caught up with Fontillas during GOP Manila for a full breakdown of how the structure works and the thinking behind it.

“In Manila, something really hit me,” he said. “I heard it a couple of dozen times while I was there. Even though players understood the math, dropping from 60 big blinds down to 30 big blinds right at the close of registration was a pretty shocking experience for them. You’ve grinded it out, you’re comfortably playing 30 or 40 big blinds, and then at the close of reg you lose half your chips in terms of big blinds.”

The fix was simple: an intermediate step. “If players still want to fire at 30, I just added the 40 BB level, so it’s basically three levels of registration now,” Fontillas explained. “We didn’t really extend the reg time. In the Main Event we were doing 120/120 [minutes], so we just cut it into 60/60/120. In theory the amount of reg time is the same, so I’m still saving players an hour or two a day.”

GOP Taipei — GOP’s Cronus Structure is built around one principle: “time is gold”

For Fontillas, it comes back to the same principle that shaped Cronus in the first place: a better experience without sacrificing the philosophy. “The vision still stands, and I believe the progression and the experience for the players is much better now,” he said. “If you’re playing a single-day event at GOP, we start at 12:30 in the afternoon and get you done before midnight, so you can enjoy the destination too.”

It’s a theme that runs through everything Fontillas has built with GOP: a tour shaped, level by level, around the people playing it. “That’s what it all comes down to” he said. “The experience for the players is what matters.”

All data and images courtesy of Gods of Poker.