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.

I pledge £200, but only for a Eureka Poker Tour event.

career move for Andy Gray?

don't get me started on God or Gods

a second may seem like a very small time frame to us, but to fleas, who only have a life expectancy of a day or two, a second may be the equivalent of a whole afternoon, well it will do once they have evolved, assuming they do actually evolve in the alternative universe that is this thread. Probably shouldn't assume anythng in this thread though.

Who said that?

Yes, he did.

et cetera

Big fleas have little fleas, on their backs to bite em.

Those fleas have other fleas, and so on, ad infinitum.

Thats a bit too early in the thread. We're still at the primordial soup stage and fleas and their fleas have not yet evolved.

et cetera

Is death the end or can you rebuy?

Everything is a concept that we, as human beings, lack the capacity to fully understand

?

When was the beginning of time and the universe?

If there was such a starting point, what came before it?

'Everything' is a constituent of this and other more complex theortical questions

run that by me again. I am completely Dutch.

FYP

'Alles' is een bestanddeel van deze en andere meer complexe theoretische capaciteit vragen

Everything is a concept that we, as human beings, lack the capacity to fully understand

?

When was the beginning of time and the universe?

If there was such a starting point, what came before it?

'Everything' is a constituent of this and other more complex theortical questions

run that by me again. I am completely baffled.

quod erat demonstrandum

Everything is a concept that we, as human beings, lack the capacity to fully understand

?

When was the beginning of time and the universe?

If there was such a starting point, what came before it?

'Everything' is a constituent of this and other more complex theortical questions

No sympathy as such, but its pretty sad that the old guys couldn't take the joke and thought that turning their golf clubs into offensive weapons would be a good idea. If they had connected and injured the kids, I don't think they would have had much sympathy from a judge if they tried to plead mitigating circumstances. The old guys would get done for aggravated bodily harm, while the kids would probably be done for trespass or some such crime.

Everything is a concept that we, as human beings, lack the capacity to fully understand

My parents have a small cottage up in the very north west of Scotland. The MOD frequently do low flight training up there. Twice I saw them do incredible stuff. First time was out on a hike and was eating lunch of sandwiches while perched near the top of a waterfall that went down into a steep but narow gulley. Two planes in quick succession flew below where I was sitting through the gulley, angled at 90 degrees so they could fly through it safely.

Second one was more of a flyby along the lines of those in the video. The plane flew over a small hill at the back of the cottage and directly overhead, barely 15 feet above the cottage and must have passed over the hill at less than 10 feet off the ground. I was in the garden and would have dropped the tea all over me if I had been drinking it at the time.

Amazing stuff to witness.