blonde poker forum

Mr Raab referred to "The Eureka Poker Tour" elsewhere.

Ahem.

Anyone know what that's all about, where it will run, who sponsors it, why it's callled that?

Nope, nope, nope and nope.

No need to thank me.

PokerStars is pleased to announce the PokerStars.net Eureka Poker Tour, which is set to bring the big game tournament experience to Eastern and Central Europe, at very affordable buy-ins.

erm...yeah.  I meant ^This^. 

On his FB page he posted just the one word 'Eureka!' a couple of weeks ago but I took no notice at the time really.

Here ya go Gramps.  Info, schedule and all  

http://www.pokerstars.com/eureka-poker-tour/  

Google is your friend.

Thank you Dawn, & Acid. I was actually teeing it up for Raaby to volley in! Apologies if I misled you.

I just spoke with him, he has just boarded a plane home from Eureka-Land, & will gleefully volley in his Eureka spam when he gets back online.

He told me all about it a while back, & he was very excited about it, so I told him I'd start a thead to arouse some Eureka Poker Tour interest. Interestingly, we could shorten the Tour title to EPT, but that might cause some confusion. Oh, wait......

See now...if you'd posted this on Sunday, we'd have taken no notice and you'd have a perfect volley.  Sundays in future please and thanks.  We're not responsible on a Monday.

It's called the Eureka tour because Jon Raab had the idea for it in the bath and to celebrate ran naked through the town to tell people.

In that case I'm pretty sure technolog will be interested in playing this.

Sorry Jack, it's just too easy.  ;D

 rotflmfao ;applause; ;hattip;

The receptionist said I'd found something to wrap round me. So there :P

sounds like a brag there

Bad beat actually. He had a beard :(

Hello, back not from Eurekaland, but from Madrid, where we just had a very successful Estrellas Poker Tour event with almost 500 players. The final table did go on a bit too long however, so I had to go straight to the airport after the event finally concluded at 7.30am on Monday morning and was far too tired yeterday to come on here and respond. Now I'm rested and almost refreshed.

Here's a bit of background on the Eureka Poker Tour and my involvement.

After leaving Grosvenor/Blue Square last June and saying goodbye to the GUKPT I had a long weekend off before starting my new role at PokerStars as business development manager for live events in Europe. My job was outlined to me as working to develop some of the existing national tours run by PokerStars (e.g. Estrellas Poker Tour, Russian Poekr Series) and to work on launching some new ones. My first new tour was assigned as one for the Balkans. So we set about seeing how we could devise a national type tour along the lines of UKIPT/Estrellas for not just Balkan countries but for the rest of Central & Eastern Europe as well. So, we came up with a schedule of events to take place in Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. As not all of these countries are in the Balkans, it became clear that it would not be appropriate to name it in that way. While we in the UK tend to think of everything east of Germany as Eastern Europe, many of these countries see themsleves as Central European rather than Eastern. But calling it the Central & Eastern European Poker Tour would have been a little bit boring and not particularly glamourous (not that poker events are really that glamourous anyway). There was no single word that would adequately or appropriately describe the region, so we started to look at more abstract names that we could use for the tour and I stumbled upon the idea of calling it Eureka. The stakeholders from the various countries involved all like the name so we decided to go with it.

The name is a bit like marmite, some people love it, others don't. It is however unique as it is the first of the PokerStars tours to not use a geographical term and whether you like it or not, it is a talking point. So, after jumping out of the bath and streaking through the poker room, it is time to put some meat on the bones of what the Eureka Poker Tour is.

First of all, the name will not be shortened, so it will not be referred to as EPT or EKPT, but simply as Eureka! Each of the events will feature an €800 main event and a good supporting schedule of side events. The tour will have a leaderboard, with prizes for the top performing players throughout the season (side events counting towards this as well). Each has an extensive schedule of online satellites, designed to generate around 150 online qualifiers for each event. Most of the countries are quite cheap places to visit and as the average income in the region is much lower than in Western Europe, we have tried to keep hotel options and other costs to a minimum, to encourage maximum participation from players within the region, where poker is relatively new compared to over here.

Overall, I think its going to be a really fun tour and I would love to see some familiar faces at some of these events, so if you fancy a European poker trip that won't cost you an arm and a leg, but still offers a an excellent structure and a high standard of organisation, why not give the Eureka Poker Tour a spin.

I will try to answer any questions you may have about it and will use this thread as a place to update Blondes on news about the tour and the individual events. The first event takes place in the Czech Republic at the Card Casino Prague from 16th-20th March. The main event starts on the 17th and there are two starting days and a soft cap of 400 players. Nearby hotels are very cheap (circa €200 for five nights) and we already have nearly 50 online qualfiers, with over a month of sats left to go. The online sat schedule is more varied than a lot of other online satellite schedules with qualifying options for players with smaller and bigger bankrolls. Get involved if you fancy a fun time in a fun location and a chance to school the locals in the art of tournament poker.

GL with the EKPT

Sounds good to me

Where can I find the online qualifiers?

Online qualifiers on PokerStars, Events>Specials tab

Thanks - will have a go

How come all the buy ins are euro but none of the participating countries actually use them ?

Slovenia does actually use the Euro and in most of the other countries, their casinos usually choose the Euro over their own currency for gaming purposes. It also keeps it more consistent and avoids currency exchange issues for online satellites, which are all in Euros.

In Moscow, & St Petersburg, the Euro & the $ were both used as the standard poker currency.