European Poker Tour
One of the youngest poker tournaments in the world today is PokerStars.com’s European Poker Tour. Founded in 2004, the EPT has very quickly become one of the tournaments that poker players all over want to participate in. PokerStars has been a respected online poker room for quite sometime now, and so it was not difficult to find people who are willing to patronize the tournament.
Part of the EPT’s initial drawing power came from the fact that it is a lot more open to the public than both the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour are in terms of who can join. The WSOP is joined by the poker elites, and the WPT requires a buy-in of $2,500 to $25,000 for people to participate (most events fall at the $10,000 line though, about the same as the World Series of Poker), and additional regulations added by the government later on made it tougher for people to join. At the EPT, however, they kept the buy-in to a minimum, giving a buy-in amount half of that of the WPT. This made people flock to the EPT to participate. However, because they had limited resources and limited space, EPT officials raised the limit later on, also adopting the $10,000 buy-in that other tournaments required. Also, this tournament has has eight people at the final table instead of six, and so the competition is fiercer when it comes to the end of the tournament.
The tournament is the creation of television director John Duthie. Some of the best poker players in the world join the tournament every year to tour around major cities in Europe for a series of tournaments that are televised. The countries that are part of the tour are the following: the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain and Ireland. The finals always takes place in one of the gambling meccas of the world – Monte Carlo, in the beautiful nation of Monacco. As of 2009, the EPT has had six seasons, with season 6 finishing in early 2010.