While wrapping up the proceedings in the Bahamas, PokerStars announced several new stops on its range of global tours, including the North American Poker Tour (NAPT).
According to CardPlayer Magazine, the NAPT will return to two locations from its inaugural season, the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles (scheduled for March 5th through 10th) and the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut (April 8th through 13th). Poker News Daily has been able to independently verify through PokerStars the stop at the Bike, but PokerStars has not yet confirmed the Mohegan Sun’s dates.
Both stops will likely feature a Championship Event and a Bounty Shootout, with the latter being one of the more successful innovations on the tournament schedule. The Bounty Shootout at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), which had a $5,000 buy-in, drew in a strong field of 216 players and has been popular with the pros in attendance.
CardPlayer also states that the two stops on the second season of the NAPT will be taped for television on ESPN in the United States. In addition, new outlets worldwide will expand the exposure of the NAPT. TSN in Canada, Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, and other outlets throughout Latin America will air the proceedings. PokerStars is scheduled to send out a press release with more details on NAPT Season 2 this week.
After the NAPT announcement, PokerStars unveiled information about the fourth season of the Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT). The new season will begin in Sao Paolo, Brazil from February 8th to 16th and is expected to be the largest tournament ever held in South America. One of the new additions to the LAPT lineup is a tournament stop in Columbia.
Moving on to the Asian rim, PokerStars used the PCA to also announce that it will hold a six-event tournament schedule in the largest gaming Mecca in the world, Macau. The Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) will use Macau as a stop on its fifth season of action. Also in the region, PokerStars announced the third season of the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) with stops that include Darwin, Australia and Queensland, New Zealand.
Europe continues to be a hotbed of activity for PokerStars, not only with the European Poker Tour (EPT), but also individual regional tours across the continent. CardPlayer reports that Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano gave an update on the Italian Poker Tour and then announced the upcoming Eureka Poker Tour, which will focus on Baltic countries like Bulgaria and Croatia. The first event of the Eureka Poker Tour will be held in March in Prague.
According to CardPlayer, the different regional tour schedules could be expanding. “We now have ten tours around the world and by the end of the year we are probably going to have at least 12 tours… because we believe that live poker has a very strong future around the world,” CardPlayer quotes Jeffrey Haas, the head of PokerStars’ live events, as saying.
