Dara O'Kearney and David Lappin leave WPT Global over Ren Lin signing
The people behind the award winning Chip Race podcast said working alongside Lin would be untenable.
The hosts of The Chip Race podcast have ended their partnership with WPT Global following their appointment of Ren Lin as an ambassador.
Dara O'Kearney and David Lappin have just announced that Lin's appointment made their position untenable. Both men were critical of Lin on the podcast after his suspension from GGPoker and subsquent reinstatement at WSOP Paradise.
The news that he was to be a WPT Global ambassador alongside them prompted them to part ways with the site. Lin admitted to ghosting back in October last year with his former sponsor GGPoker.
The Chip Race is a three-time Global Poker Award winning podcast of the year, and now finds itself without a sponsor.
For full disclosure, this writer is a regular news contributor to the podcast and cowrites books with O'Kearney. I have no involvement with WPT Global, however.
You can see the full statement below:
📣 ANNOUNCEMENT pic.twitter.com/zPqEdR8yyR
— 🎙 The Chip Race 🎙 (@thechiprace) January 13, 2026
Civil war at the WPT?
O'Kearney and Lappin exiting WPT Global is just one of many signs of a rift amongst the brands that use the World Poker Tour banner.
Yesterday the main WPT X account distanced itself from the appointment of Ren Lin by WPT Global, and the America-facing WPT Club Gold X account launched a series of memes attacking the appointment. This prompted the WPT Global X account to fire back and criticise the ambassadors at WPT Club Gold. All of these tweets have now been deleted by all parties, but we have a screenshot of one of the exchanges:
Afterwards, WPT Global released a more detailed announcement about Lin's appointment, expressing that his was a redemption story in poker:
— WPT Global (@wpt_global) January 12, 2026
For clarity, the World Poker Tour owns WPT Club Gold, but only licenses the WPT brand to WPT Global.
It is fair to say that it has been a bad PR week for all under the World Poker Tour brand.
