PokerStars Announces NAPT Season 2 Stops

PokerStars made multiple announcements this morning at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in regards to its international lineup of live poker tours. “For those of you who are keeping track we now have more than 10 tours around the world and by the end of the year we are probably going to have 12 tours around the world, and that is basically because we believe that live poker has a very strong future around the world,” said Jeffrey Haas, head of PokerStars live events. “Poker players love competing live with other players and even if they are playing online a big part of that is to practice to become better live poker players, and some poker players play live in order to become better online poker players. It is very interesting to see the growth of the poker economy and poker culture and poker community around the world.”

The most anticipated announcement made had to do with season two of the North American Poker Tour. Team PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu told media and industry representatives that the NAPT will return to the Bicycle Casino on March 5-10 and the Mohegan Sun from April 8-13. “I’m looking forward to a fun and exciting season two,” said Negreanu. “A lot of people are traveling to Europe from the U.S. to play in the European Poker Tour so it’s good to have something in our own backyard that has numbers that are 500-600 players rather than 200-250.”

These two NAPT stops will also include the popular Bounty Shootout events (the current NAPT Bounty Shootout at the PCA sold out yesterday) and both stops will be filmed for television production on ESPN in the United States. “We had 701 players at our first event and that was with a supposed untelevised event. This next one is going to be phenomenal, we are expecting over 1,000 players,” said Kelly O’Hara vice president of marketing at the Bicycle Casino. “We are doing an extensive festival that will run from the 23rd all the way up to March 4. We will be running satellites and many other events in addition to the main event that will give players a great variety.”

Season 2 of the NAPT will run on multiple international television networks in addition to ESPN in the U.S. It will air on TSN in Canada, Channel 4 in the U.K., and in other countries in the commonwealth and various states in Latin America.

The next announcement concerned season 4 of the Latin American Poker Tour. The season will begin in Sao Paolo, Brazil and it will run from Feb. 16-20. A new country that will be added to the tour during the new season is Colombia. Playing card supplier Copag is the new official sponsor of the tour. “We had a Team PokerStars pro, Jose Barbero, win back to back main events during LAPT season 3 which is something that has never happened before and this created an unbelievable energy for us in the Latin American market and we’re looking forward to an interesting season four,” said David Carrion, the president of the LAPT. “We are going to open up the season in Sao Paolo, which is anticipated to be the biggest poker tournament in Latin American history, where the field is anticipated to be 500-600 players.”

Various other announcements included the six events scheduled to take place at the PokerStars Macau poker room at the Grand Lisboa hotel and casino in China, including an Asia Pacific Poker Tour main event. Season three for the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour was announced, with exciting tourist-centered destinations in Darwin, Australia and Queenstown, New Zealand. “We’re moving into our third season with the player of the year on the ANZPT, which is a great way to retain players. Tony Hachem won the first two ANZPT player of the year awards and he is held in very high regard in Australia,” said Danny McDonagh, president of the APPT, commissioner of the ANZPT, and poker operations manager at the PokerStar Macau poker room at the Grand Lisboa Macau.

Team PokerStars pro Luca Pagano stepped to the podium after that and he gave a progress report on the Italian Poker Tour and the enthusiasm present at those events thanks to his Italian countryman. Pagano also announced the newly formed Eureka Poker Tour, which will take place in various European and Balkan countries, including the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Croatia. The tour will start in Prague in March. “The Italian Poker Tour went to Nova Gorica (Slovenia) and there were a lot of Italian players but a lot of local players as well, and a lot of players from Croatia and Romania. That means that those countries are becoming natural markets and that is why PokerStars decided to create a poker tour for those countries,” said Pagano.

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