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POKERSTARS.NET EPT SEASON 7 AWARDS ANNOUNCED FEATURING NEW HEADS-UP AWARD

August 13, 2010

PokerStars.net today announced details for this season’s EPT Awards. The Awards, which
recognise and reward top performances during the world’s richest poker tour, have proved
hugely popular with poker fans across Europe and beyond, and created a real buzz during
Season 6 as players vied to top the rankings and snag the titles.
Season 7’s EPT Awards will feature a revised structure that awards different points to
different tournaments according to their field size. A new award is also being introduced to
reward the best Heads-Up player.
The full list of awards is as follows:
• EPT Player of the Year
• EPT Omaha Player of the Year
• EPT Mixed Games Player of the Year
• EPT Heads-Up Player of the Year (NEW)
• EPT Players’ Choice of the Year
• EPT Best Achievement of the Year
• EPT Best Online Qualifier
• EPT Best Country
EPT players will be able to cast votes on their fellow players for the Players’ Choice and
Best Achievement Awards.
Each individual award winner will win a seat for the opening event of EPT Season 8 and will
also receive a PokerStars trophy (golden for Player of the Year and silver for all other award
winners).
The nation that triumphs in the EPT Best Country award will win a €10,000 freeroll
tournament to be played live at the EPT stop closest to the winning country. The Best
Country will be determined by the highest percentage of cashes, i.e. the number of players
that cash out of the total of EPT players from that country. The winner of last season’s Best
Country, the Czech Republic, will host its live €10,000 freeroll at EPT Prague in December.
For further information please visit http://www.europeanpokertour.com/awards/
Russian pro Max Lykov, current EPT Player of the Year and winner of last season’s
inaugural EPT event in Kyiv, is looking forward to breaking records in Season 7. He said he
hopes to win a second, or even a third title. However, as he puts it, “It’s going to be a little
harder this year because I’m better-known now and people understand how I play a bit more. But I plan to try, and I’m going to play all the EPTs. Changing the rules to award more
points depending on field size is definitely a good idea.”
For his POY Award, Lykov won a seat into EPT Tallinn and said he is having a great time.
“I’ve never been here before and it’s a beautiful city – and at the moment I have chips!”
EPT Season 7 kicked off in the beautiful city of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and is running
August 11-16, 2010. Team PokerStars Pro Katja Thater is due to receive her award for EPT
Best Mixed Games Player of the Year at the party being held at EPT Tallinn on Friday night.
There was an eight-way tie for the award during the regular EPT season so an online final
was held, which Thater won.
Joining Thater in Tallinn are other winners of Season 6 Awards, including: Player of the
Year, Russian pro Max Lykov; Danish pro Allan Baekke, recipient of the EPT Achievement
of the Year Award for winning EPT Snowfest and running deep at EPT Sanremo; EPT
Players’ Choice winner and Berlin champion Kevin MacPhee; and EPT Online Qualifier of
the Year and Friend of PokerStars Pierre Neuville.
For a full EPT Season 7 schedule, please visit: www.ept.com

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Pokerstars News

August 11, 2010

Setting records in Macau
PokerStars is pretty good when it comes to setting records, whether it’s for the most players online or the biggest online tournament in the world. So why not try to set another? This time it’s in the live poker world, by hosting the Macau Million, the biggest live tournament in Asia, at the PokerStars Macau at Casino Grand Lisboa. The event, which concluded over the weekend, smashed the Asian record for field size when 741 players turned up in Macau, beating the previous record of 679 players set at the Metro Card Club during the Filipino Poker Tour. Justin Chan from Hong Kong was the eventual winner, collecting a first prize of HKD$250,000, his share of a HKD$1,467,180 prize pool that shattered the HKD$1 million guarantee.
Habernig wins the lot in LAPT Florianopolis
While Asia was setting records in Macau, the newest destination on the Latin American Poker Tour found its first champion over the weekend when 19-year-old Matthias Habernig won the LAPT Florianopolis in Brazil, collecting a first prize of R$435,000. Ahead of a field of 364, Habernig, from Austria, who had an overwhelming chip lead going into the final table, defeated Brazilian Dayan Vardanega heads-up to win his first poker title, played out at the Costao do Santinho resort near Florianopolis. In fact it’s shaping up to be a season of firsts for the tour. After new stops in Lima, Peru, and now Brazil, the tour heads to Rosario in Argentina for the first time for its season finale next month. More details of that can be found on the LAPT website: http://www.lapt.com
Back to the Baltic
The long awaited start of the new season of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour starts tomorrow. Poker Players from around Europe and the world will head to Tallinn, Estonia to battle it out across the Baltic baize at the tour’s newest stop, which should make for a fitting start to the tour’s seventh season, being the host venue of the ever-popular Baltic festival. This year’s tour takes in new stops as well as old favourites, with a 13-stop schedule starting in the Estonian capital and ending in the spring after visits to such places as Vilamoura, London, Barcelona, Deauville, Berlin, and San Remo on the Italian Riviera. It promises to be another record setting year and all the details of what’s in store can be found on the EPT website: http://www.ept.com
Oh Vienna
If you’ve been thinking that it’s about time the European Poker Tour headed back to Vienna then that’s all about to come true. It’s been six years since the EPT last staged an event in the Austrian capital and in Season 7 the Tour will return in spectacular style with a five-day €5,300 event running 26-31 October. To mark the occasion PokerStars will be guaranteeing a €500,000 first prize. It will all take place in the stunning 19th century Renaissance-style Kursalon palace in Vienna’s beautiful City Park. Fear not, for they will allow sneakers.
Vienna is a cultural capital of Europe, home once to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Johann Strauss, not to mention Hedy Lamarr and Maria von Trapp. Expect plenty of local poker talent to converge on the Austrian capital, including Team PokerStars Pros Sebastian Ruthenberg and Sandra Naujoks, along with Austrian-born team member Johannes Steindl and PokerStars SportStar Boris Becker.

For more details of the event go to the EPT website at http://www.ept.com.

Welcome back to the WCOOP
For online poker players around the world the day they’ve been waiting for is nearly here. In just a few weeks time any thought of going outside or switching the laptop off are set aside in favour of 23 days of pure poker heaven. It can only mean the start of the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) which kicks off on 5 September on PokerStars.com.
The WCOOP is the richest online poker series in the world, consisting of 62 events over 23 days with tournaments in every poker discipline. This year PokerStars has guaranteed $50 million in prizes, the highest guarantee ever, making September one of the most important months on anyone’s poker calendar. It all comes to a finish on 27 September with the highlight $10,300 high roller mixed game event (8-game) and the traditional two-day $5,000 main event, which has a $10m guaranteed prize pool.
Last year 43,973 players from 140 countries took part in the WCOOP, double that of the year before. Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko went on to win the main event worth more than $1.7 million. For more details go to the WCOOP website: www.wcoop.com

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POKERSTARS GUARANTEES US $50 MILLION IN PRIZES FOR 2010 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OF ONLINE POKER

August 10, 2010

The PokerStars.com World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) – the richest online poker tournament
series in the world – kicks off its ninth annual instalment on September 5, 2010. The 2010 WCOOP features
US $50 million in guaranteed prizes, the most that PokerStars.com has ever guaranteed for a WCOOP series.
In addition to trying to win life-changing money, players will compete in almost every conceivable poker
discipline to become a World Champion and to win a sought-after WCOOP gold bracelet.
WCOOP is hosted exclusively on PokerStars.com. It runs over 23 days, from September 5-27, 2010, and
begins with a $215 6-Max NL Hold’em tournament. This year’s WCOOP schedule includes 62 events – many
with a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million or more – as well as four brand-new knockout events, giving players
the opportunity to win some cash even if they do not make the money. The series will culminate with a $10,300
High Roller mixed-game event (8-Game this year) and the traditional 2-Day $5,200 NL Hold’em Main Event
($10 Million guaranteed), starting on September 26, 2010.
43,973 unique players from 140 countries around the world competed in the 2009 WCOOP, an increase of
almost 100% in player participation over 2008. Yevgeniy ‘Jovial Gent’ Timoshenko won the Main Event, a win
worth more than $1.7 million. Players ‘Udon Wannit’ ($1.2 million), Daniel ‘djk123′ Kelly ($956,956) and
‘reddeevil’ ($933,712) also had phenomenal success. Kelly, ‘ICuRaRook’ and ‘Maksflaks’ shared the honours
for most cashes in the series by making the money in 11 of the 45 events.
“Players across the world re-arrange their calendars around the WCOOP schedule,” said Team PokerStars
Pro Daniel Negreanu. “It is the biggest and best online poker tournament series – and draws in tens of
thousands of players, with the deepest structures and a wide variety of events. I can’t wait to play this year’s
series!”
Players can qualify for WCOOP events via PokerStars satellites. All players, no matter what the size of their
bankrolls, have a chance to qualify for, and perhaps ultimately win, an event.
For satellite information and updates on this year’s World Championship of Online Poker please check
www.pokerstars.com, www.pokerstarsblog.com and http://www.wcoop.com/ regularly.

Written by admin · Filed Under PokerStars