Evolution of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour

Just like Archimedes 2,000 years ago, John Duthie, founder of the European Poker Tour, had his moment of clarity in the bath. From that point, it took the acclaimed TV drama director just six months to get the project -- Europe's first transnational poker tour -- off the ground.

In 2005, he outlined the genesis of the tour to Card Player Europe. "The World Poker Tour had been hugely successful, and it became clear that its organisers wanted to expand into Europe. They already had made one or two attempts, but when they proved unsuccessful, I decided to jump in. I had an edge over them from the start: I knew the European market better than they did, I had a few contacts in important places, and I was also a TV executive. So, once I had convinced myself that this was something that I really wanted to start up, my job was to convince casinos that it would also be in their best interests to let us film the events they hosted. This was going to be an uphill struggle, as up till that point, filming inside a casino had been strictly forbidden.

"I had a great relationship with the Vic in London, and I got them on board quickly. Then, once I'd signed PokerStars as the sponsor, and Eurosport agreed to broadcast the shows, other European venues started to realise that something special was happening, and they followed suit."

And great oaks from little acorns grow. The EPT has expanded from its humble €1,000 buy-in event in Barcelona with 229 players to the €10,000 buy-in event in Monte Carlo, which in season three attracted 706 runners and created Europe's largest-ever prize pool of €6,636,400.

This incredible growth didn't happen overnight, nor was it without pain for organisers and players alike.

At the Dawn of Time
Season one, event one of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour was held at the Gran Casino in Barcelona, Spain, and saw 229 players pony up €1,000. Swede Alexander Stevic won the event and unwittingly started a trend of Scandinavian domination in it.

The season drew to a close with the grand final in Monte Carlo, which boasted a staggering (in context) €10,000 buy-in and attracted 221 players. Rob Hollink won the €635,000 first prize. In between the first and last events, Brits John Shipley and Ram Vaswani won in London and Dublin. Noah Boeken triumphed in Copenhagen, Brandon Schaefer took down Deauville, and Pascal Perrault was victorious in Vienna.

The season was filmed for broadcast on Eurosport by Sunset+Vine.

At the end of season one, Duthie told Card Player Europe: "I hope that we can continue to work with Eurosport, because I see them as an ideal, natural platform to broadcast the shows around Europe. My plan is to get the shows even closer to prime time than they already are, while still keeping the current one-hour format. If, for whatever reason, this doesn't work out, we will be forced to sell the program to separate stations, but that's not the way I want this to work. Eurosport's involvement is a great uniting factor, and my guess is that the growth of the EPT could be seriously hampered if we lose that."

Season one was marked by varying buy-ins, structures, and durations, with Barcelona taking just one day, Dublin, London, Copenhagen and Vienna lasting two days, and Deauville and Monte Carlo lasting four. Season two would begin with a blowup in Barcelona, which would force the EPT to look at how it approached the organisation of the events on the tour.

Growing Pains
Between seasons one and two of the EPT, Duthie, a formidable poker player himself who in 2000 won £1 million at the first Poker Million, made the final table of the $3,000 no-limit hold'em event at the World Series of Poker.

Shortly afterward, Duthie explained to Card Player Europe how the tour was developing. "The most significant difference of the EPT next season is the increase in the minimum buy-in from €2,000 to €4,000, a natural progression that should attract the high rollers without excluding the poker masses. Also, the Austrian event has been switched from the Concord Card Casino in Vienna to Baden, 30 kilometers south of the Austrian capital. Baden is one of Europe's most elegant and historic casinos."

However, with hopes for season two soaring sky-high, organisers and players alike were brought back to earth with a bump as stop one on the tour, Barcelona, descended into chaos.

Conrad Brunner, head of PokerStars communications, wrote in Card Player Europe at the time: "The problem was with the event's unexpected popularity. The season-one event had 227 runners for a €1,000 tournament, and despite raising the buy-in to €4,000, the organisers were hoping for a similar turnout in season two. Instead, they had 325 runners, with several more disappointed players unable to secure a seat."

EPT Tournament Director Thomas Kremser said at the time, "We really tried to please everybody, and we worked our socks off that week in Barcelona. In the end, we got all but four players from the waiting list into the tournament."

Duthie was philosophical about the lessons learned from Barcelona: "It was this that led us to completely rethink the structures, so, in effect, something good has come out of it."

Household Names
After the disappointment of Barcelona, Brunner wrote in Card Player Europe that the Tour would learn from the mistakes made there: "Step one will be announcing a cap for each tournament in advance, so that players can see if there is likely to be a sellout. Step number two will be the introduction of 60-minute levels as standard practice for all EPT tournaments, except for the Monte Carlo EPT Grand Final, which will have 90-minute levels. Step three will see all EPT tournaments made three-day events or longer. Finally, in order to accommodate as many players as possible, while maintaining a comfortable structure, all remaining tournaments in season two of the EPT (Copenhagen, Deauville, and Monte Carlo) will have day 1A and day 1B flights."

Duthie explained how this would benefit the players: "From a player's point of view, this reduces the luck factor significantly, in that a player can survive a dry run of cards, whereas before, he would always be under pressure to play a hand. I suspect we will see the better and more skillful players surviving longer with the new structures. The overall prize pool obviously increases as a result of the larger number of players, too.

"The EPT adds on €60,000 in the form of free entries for the winners of the regular-season EPT tournaments to the €10,000 grand final in Monte Carlo in March, which is rarely acknowledged. The World Poker Tour takes this entry fee out of the prize pool, whereas we add it on."

And so the scene was set for a rebirth of sorts. After Frenchman Jan Boubli's triumph in Barcelona, Mark Teltscher took down the London event (and would feature again very prominently in a season-four event) and Patrik Antonius won in Baden.

Rolf Slotboom wrote in Card Player Europe at the time: "One of the players who impressed me the most was Patrik Antonius, a young man from Helsinki who won the EPT Baden event and took third place in Barcelona.

"He plays with a smooth rhythm and calmness that are very unusual for a man of his age. [He is] one of the best young players in European poker who is also a great example of the way someone should behave at the table: calm, friendly, never sour after losing a pot, and never one to brag after winning one."

Meanwhile, the trend in players trying to qualify on PokerStars.com was growing to the extent that they were now making up about one-third of the field. That trend continues to this day.

Season three would be the last EPT broadcast on Eurosport, but the Tour would go from strength to strength, with new destinations added, and would continue to innovate with live Internet broadcasts.

New Horizons
The buy-in to all EPT events was increased again in the 2005-2006 season from €4,000 to €5,000. Dortmund, Germany, and Warsaw, Poland, were added to the schedule, and Deauville in France was dropped. This was disappointing, as it was the destination that had grown in popularity the most, with numbers jumping from 243 in season one to 434 in season two.

The reason was outside the control of the organisers. In a statement at the time, they said, "The European Poker Tour regrets to announce that the 2007 French Open poker tournament, due to be held at Casino Barrière de Deauville from February 20 to February 24, 2007, has been cancelled.

"This is as a direct result of last-minute intervention by the French authorities, making it impossible for the Lucien Barrière group to run a poker tournament on their premises in Deauville."

Season three saw sellout tournaments in Barcelona, London, Copenhagen, Dortmund, and Warsaw. The season's showpiece event -- the €10,000 buy-in EPT Grand Final -- attracted a record field of 706 players, with a prize pool of €6.6 million, making it the richest tournament ever held outside of Las Vegas. The first prize of €1.85 million was won by PokerStars qualifier and WSOP bracelet winner Gavin Griffin.

The total prize pool of EPT season three was €26.6 million, with more than 3,400 participants. This cast of thousands was distilled to just eight winners: Bjorn-Erik Glenne (Barcelona), Vicky Coren (London), Thang Duc Nguyen (Baden), Roland De Wolfe (Dublin), Magnus Petersson (Copenhagen), Andreas Hoivold (Dortmund), Peter Jepsen (Warsaw), and Gavin Griffin (Monte Carlo).

PokerStars.com qualified more than 250 players through its site for Monte Carlo, and the event was broadcast on the Internet at www.eptlive.com.

Growing Old Gracefully
Season four of the EPT was the most ambitious yet, and prior to the cards winging their way through the air for the traditional first event in Barcelona, the organisers announced a new, if unorthodox, stop on the tour. "The most exciting news for next season is that the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), to be held next January at the Atlantis Casino Resort in the Bahamas, has been added to the EPT schedule," said Duthie. "The PCA, a hugely popular event, is now 'an official EPT tournament,' and we are delighted to welcome it to our list of events."

Prague in the Czech Repubic was also added to the list, and in Barcelona, Duthie then announced the addition of San Remo, Italy, as a destination. He has always stated that Italy should be on the map, and 2008 would finally see its inclusion.
Barcelona almost saw another first for the Tour when friends and roommates Sander Lyloff from Denmark and Mark Teltscher met heads up. If Teltscher won, he'd be the first player to win two EPT titles, but it wasn't to be. Lyloff, a former chess champion, won the €1,170,700 for first place when he hit a set of jacks against Teltscher's pair of kings.

Joe Mouawad won more than £600,000 in London, and Julian Thew won the Baden event and more than €670,000.

The €8,000 buy-in in Dublin may have scared off many local players, but 221 still showed up, and a thrilling final table ensued with a record six PokerStars qualifiers and prodigy Annette Obrestad getting heads up with a 5-1 chip lead. It was to be American qualifier Reuben Peters who triumphed, though, clawing his way back from the huge deficit to win more than €500,000.

Backgammon champion Arnaud Mattern won more than €700,000 in Prague, which attracted 555 players, while the new "European" destination in the Caribbean would prove massively popular.

Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, who had come agonisingly close to victory in Copenhagen in season three, beat a field of 1,136 players in the biggest televised poker tournament outside of the WSOP. ElkY banked $2 million for his victory. On this occasion, more than half the field qualified on PokerStars.com.

Dortmund in Germany saw the youngest-ever EPT winner when Canadian Mike McDonald took €933,600 back home across the Atlantic, and another qualifier, Tim Vance from the U.S., took down Copenhagen for a first prize of €834,964.

Michael Schulze of Germany won €609,782 in Warsaw, Poland, and another 21-year-old Internet qualifier, James Mercier, lifted €869,000 in San Remo, Italy.

Over four seasons, 33 events, and around a dozen countries, the European Poker Tour has been an innovative force in European poker. It dared to go where no one had gone before, it learned from its mistakes (as pioneers must do in order to prosper), and it continues to demand the highest standards of itself in terms of organisation, while forcing the highest standards of poker from its players.

Join Card Player Poker + Sports next month for the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final report and a look behind the scenes on the Tour.