EPT Returns to Monaco This Spring With PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final

LONDON, February 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --



Festival will feature the first-ever €100,000 buy-in event in Europe

Season 8 of the European Poker Tour will culminate April 23 to May 1, 2012 at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel & Casino with the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo^®Casino EPT Grand Final, PokerStars announced today.

The PokerStars and Monte-Carlo^®Casino EPT Grand Final will be the most important schedule of tournaments in Europe, featuring the most players and greatest variety of games designed for players ranging from recreational to high rollers. The centerpiece of the festival will be the €10,000 Main Event, but there will also be a huge range of side events, along with Hold'em and Omaha cash games, and sit & go's incorporating Hold'em, Omaha, HORSE and Stud formats starting from €200.

EPT President Edgar Stuchly said: "We're delighted to be heading back to Monaco for the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo^®Casino EPT Grand Final. This will be the biggest and best EPT festival ever held and we're putting together an incredible tournament."

Super High Roller

For the first time in poker history a €100,000 buy-in Super High Roller event will also be played on European soil. This event will take place from April 23-25 and is expected to attract the world's best poker players.

Monaco

The return to Monaco will herald a seventh visit to the Cote d'Azur and Monaco for the European Poker Tour. The region, home to some of the world's wealthiest people and a top holiday destination for A-list celebrities, is an exciting and aspirational place to visit for poker players. This has been made possible thanks to a special agreement between Betclic Everest Group, SBM and EPT. Betclic Everest Group operates montecarlocasino.com, one of the most exciting casino website in Europe, providing only the highest class of online gaming entertainment, in the true tradition of Monte-Carlo^®-Casino, with its fabled history and premium values.

In spring, the exclusive region also plays host to many prestigious sporting events, and this year is no exception with the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo^®Casino EPT Grand Final taking place amid the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters ATP Tennis (April 13-22), the Monaco Historic Grand Prix (May 11-13) and the famous Grand Prix of Monaco (May 24-27) Formula 1 race.

The PokerStars and Monte-Carlo^®Casino EPT Grand Final tournament schedule will be announced at a later date. Please visit http://www.europeanpokertour.com for more information in the coming months.

The Monaco event will round off a fantastic eighth season of the European Poker Tour, which has seen hugely popular stops like London, Barcelona, Prague and San Remo, joined by new stops in the form of Loutraki, Greece and Campione, Italy. The tour has also seen six new champions crowned to date, as the growth of poker across Europe continues apace.

Watch the action

The Super High Roller event will be filmed from Day 2 onwards, with the highlights to be aired at a later date, while the Main Event and Champion of Champions event will both be filmed throughout for broadcasts later in the year, but will also feature live cards-up webcasts of each tournament's final table on April 30 and May 1 respectively.    

About PokerStars:

PokerStars operates PokerStars.com, the world's most popular online poker site, and serves the world's largest poker community, with more than 49 million registered members since it launched in December 2001. It's the first choice of the world's top players, with more daily tournaments than anywhere else and with the best security online. More hands have been dealt on PokerStars.com than any other site; that's over 75 billion hands and more than 475 million tournaments played.

PokerStars.com operates worldwide under license from the Isle of Man government. Recent additions to the PokerStars family include PokerStars.dk, PokerStars.fr, PokerStars.it, PokerStars.be and PokerStars.ee, which operate in Denmark, France, Italy, Belgium and Estonia respectively, under each country's government licenses.