EPT
The European Poker Tour is a series of multiple different poker tournaments ran all across the world. It is sponsored by the huge online poker site PokerStars. The European Poker Tour was created by the winner of the inaugural Poker Million tournament, John Duthie. The series of events began back in 2004, right when Texas hold’em was beginning to hit its stride in terms of popularity. The European Poker Tour is compared to the World Poker Tour quite often, and while they do have quite a few similarities, they also do multiple things very differently. The EPT has a set up which features 8 players at the final table, while the WPT’s final tables begin at 6. Originally, the EPT started as one of the most affordable buy-in events out there, with tournaments costing about half of what the WPT was charging. Since seas four though, the European Poker Tour continued to grow in terms of popularity, and raised its buy-ins, mainly due to lack of space at their events.
World Wide Interest
The EPT features quite a wide range of players from all across the world, posting impressive stats for the number of times that players in different countries have won European Poker Tour events. Over the 8 seasons that the European Poker Tour has been running, there have been 13 winners from the United Kingdom, 12 from the United States, 7 from Sweden, 6 from Germany and France, 4 from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Canada, 3 from Norway, 2 from Finland, Portugal, Lebanon, and Russia, and 1 from Italy, the Czech Republic, and Venezuela. Those numbers alone tell how popular the EPT has become over the past 8 seasons. The events also draw in some excellent analysis from big named pros also. Players like Daniel Negreanu, Victoria Coren, and Greg Raymer all provide (or have provided) analysis at different events throughout the tour’s history.
Multiple Locations
The European Poker Tour has tournaments that run all over the world, and the creators do their best to be sure that multiple countries get the host EPT events. A few of the locations that have held events are Tallinn (Estonia), Barcelona (Spain), London (UK), San Remo (Italy), Prague (Czech Republic), PCA (Bahamas), Deauville (France), Vilamoura (Portugal), Berlin (Germany), Copenhagen (Denmark), and many, many more locations. The European Poker Tour is constantly growing in terms of popularity, especially outside of the United States.
PokerStars
PokerStars is one of the sponsors and part owners of the European Poker Tour, which is an excellent thing for online poker players at the site. PokerStars runs multiple different satellites and large online poker tournaments to give players great opportunities to qualify for one of the European Poker Tour events. These satellites aren’t always high buy-in tournaments either, with some satellites starting as low as $3 to $5 dollars. PokerStars constantly offers players different specials on their site as well, and have been a huge part of the ever growing popularity of the European Poker Tour.
Biggest EPT Winners
In the first six seasons alone of the EPT, there were 7 players who took home prizes of over $2 million for winning events. The largest winner in EPT history came in the 4th season at Monte Carlo, when Glen Chorny won $3,196,354. Not far behind him were the 2nd and 3rd largest winners, Pieter de Korver, who took home $3,056,255 in season 5 at Monte Carlo, and Poorya Nazari, who won $3,000,000 in season 5 at the Caribbean Adventure. The other players to top $2 million payouts are Gavin Griffin ($2,434,061 in season 3 at Monte Carlo), Nicolas Chouity ($2,261,000 in season 6 at Monte Carlo), Harrison Gimbel ($2,200,000 in season 6 at the Caribbean Adventure), and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier ($2,000,000 in season 4 at the Caribbean Adventure).
