The festival began with humble beginnings in 1992 with a small Seven-card stud event won by a local poker player Eng Angh for ƒ18,600 (€8,749).

[1] The year was 1991, at that time poker was not so well known in Amsterdam or almost all of Europe, that was when Ron Pool working for the Headquarter asked Jan Rodrigo, at the time of Holland Casino, Amsterdam City centre, and Peter Voolstra, Duty Manager at Holland Casino and who later he would become Tournament Director of the Master Classics of Poker (MCOP), he wanted to know more about what this game was that they talked about so much.

In the same year they went to Las Vegas (US) and got in touch with Doug Dalton, who at the time worked at The Mirage casino, to understand a little more about poker tournaments.

Doug agreed to show what the tournaments were like and even traveled to Amsterdam with his wife Edna to train the dealers.

In 2021, Pieter Boers (Director of Gaming & Services at Holland Casino) announced the return of MCOP.