European Poker Tour

With the huge success of the World Poker Tour (WPT) in the US, it was only ever going to be a matter of time before the concept was taken across the pond to Europe.

The result is the European Poker Tour (EPT) ñ a series of live poker tournaments which is televised across Europe and sponsored exclusively by Pokerstars, the worldís largest poker room.

After launching in 2004, the EPT has grown from seven to nineteen tournaments hosted in some of the most beautiful cities in Europe including Barcelona, Vienna and Prague. However, The Grand Final is without doubt the jewel in the tours crown and is held in Monte Carlo every year where the winner of a 10,000 euro buy-in no limit Holdem Tournament is crowned the EPT Champion.

While the EPT has yet to attract real poker royalty, the competition is improving year on year as the prize money on offer continues to increase.

When the tour first started, buy-in levels were around half the size of the buy-ins seen on the WPT. Things changed after the third series, when increasing popularity and a restriction on casino space forced the EPT to raise the buy-in to around 8,000 (approximately $10,000).

Previous winners of EPT events have included Patrik Antonius, Jason Mercier and Ram Vaswani.

Qualify for the EPT:

If you're looking to win a seat on the EPT, then you need to head on over to Pokerstars.com. As the tour sponsor, they run regular satellite competitions for all EPT events with winners not only being awarded a seat at an upcoming EPT event but also money for travel and accomdodation expenses.

They also have some good history in the competition with Series 3 winner Gavin Griffin winning his seat online in a Pokerstars Qualifier.