European Poker Tour

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The European Poker Tour was launched in 2004 as a more international version of the extremely popular World Poker Tour. While the WPT makes most of its stops in North America, the EPT, true to its name, never leaves Europe. The tour consists of six (euro)5000 buy-in tournaments and finishes with a seventh, (euro)10,000 event.

An interesting feature of European Poker Tour tournaments is that they have a cap on the number of players that can enter each event. The caps are large enough (usually set around 500 players) that the prize pools are still extremely attractive, yet small enough to remove the “crapshoot” aspect found in many of the mega-field tournaments, such as the World Series of Poker Main Event.

While the European Poker Tour is officially sponsored by PokerStars, satellites for events on the tour can be found on many sites. Packages typically include not only the buy-in for a tournament, but airfare and accommodations as well. Qualify for the next European Poker Tour event at our EPT feature satellite sponsor, Poker Stars.

The European Poker Tour (EPT) is the biggest live series of poker tournaments in Europe. After the success of the WPT in the USA the EPT was developed in countries throughout Europe. Since many poker players couldn’t travel to the USA to take part in the live poker events the EPT was a huge success early on and has been able to survive in the market since. PokerStars now owns the EPT brand and has since made the event larger then it ever was.

PokerStars has millions of players on their poker site that play regularly and therefore PokerStars is able to offer tons of promotions aimed at the European Poker Tour. If you want to win a seat into any of the yearly EPT events you’ll be able to do so by having an account with PokerStars. Every year there is satellite tournaments held in the PokerStars poker room and most of them are very inexpensive, which means everyone will be able to have a shot at winning a prize package.

Not only is the EPT great because you get to play poker against some of the best players from around the world, but you also get to travel to some of the greatest cities in Europe. Season 7 of the European Poker Tour is currently running right now and some of the great stops on the tour this year include Portugal, Austria, Germany, London and Estonia. If you’ve ever wanted to travel through Europe you might as well play some poker while you’re traveling to try and offset your costs.

One of the great features about the EPT is the fact that the events have fairly small buy-ins when compared to other live poker events such as the WPT or WSOP. Having lower buy-ins means that fewer pros come out, but it also means that players with lower bankrolls can gain some live poker tournament experience without breaking the bank. The EPT ends every year with the EPT Grand Final, which has a buy-in of $10K. Last season’s main event had a prize pool of over $10M and many of the biggest pros in poker were present.

The majority of EPT events have a fairly small playing field, as most events have anywhere from 500-1000 players. With fairly small buy-ins the prize pools aren’t huge, but there is still usually about $100K up for grabs for the eventual winner. Make sure you don’t forget to check out PokerStars and find out how they can help you play in the EPT without spending much money.