EPT Adds Poker Tournament in Berlin

The European Poker Tour (EPT) recently decided to change up the back half of its Season Six schedule and in lieu of the stop in Dortmund will instead be traveling to Berlin.  The upcoming event promises to be the biggest poker tournament ever held on German soil and has a guaranteed first place prize of €1 million.

The tournament is set to run from March 2nd to 7th following EPT Copenhagen and preceding the new EPT Snowfest stop.  The event will take place at the Spielbank Casino and the EPT’s new home appears eager to pull out all of the stops for its new addition.  Play will be held in a two-story glass palace that will be situated adjacent to the casino in Marlene Dietrich Plaza.  The palace will have more than 6,000 feet of space, which is more than enough space to accommodate the 1,000-plus players expected to take part.  In addition to the Main Event, there will also be a number of side events that will get underway on the third day of play.

The buy-in for the Main Event will be €5,000 + €300.  With the guaranteed first place prize of €1 million, there is potential for an overlay, but even without one, the stop is poised to offer one of the biggest prize pools on the tour.  The entirety of Team PokerStars Germany will be attendance, including Sandra Naujoks, who won the Season Five stop in Dortmund last year, earning €917,000 for her efforts.  Other players scheduled to play in the event include tennis star Boris Becker and Jan Heitmann.

Dortmund was a regular stop on the EPT starting in Season Three and last year it drew a rather large field of 667 players, putting it behind only San Remo and the Grand Final in Monte Carlo in terms of attendance.  EPT staff is confident the new location in Germany is going to be even more popular than Dortmund, so Naujoks will likely have to contend with a larger field in order to defend her title.  Last year, she bested a tough final table lineup that included online poker pro Michael “Timex” McDonald, William Thorson, Johan Storakers, and Luca Pagano.

Pagano already has an incredible six EPT final tables to his credit, including two in the most recent season.  He logged a fourth place showing at EPT Warsaw and then picked up a sixth place finish at EPT Prague just over one month later.  He is the current leader on the EPT Tournament Leaderboard with 3,419 points, but Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier is hot on his heels with 3,354.

The Berlin stop is the third new location on the EPT Season Six schedule.  The other two cities, Vilamoura, Portugal and Kiev, Ukraine, already held events earlier in the season, drawing 322 and 296 players, respectively.  The upcoming EPT Snowfest is also a new addition to the schedule and will get underway shortly after Berlin wraps up.

EPT Snowfest will be held at the Alpine Palace Hotel in the Saalbach-Hinterglemm area of the Austrian Alps.  That series of events will run from March 21st to 26th.