PokerStars Announces Italian Poker Tour Calendar and Opens Poker Room in Saint Vincent
As the Malta Poker Festival celebrated the first "shuffle up and deal" of the Italian Poker Tour (IPT) Main Event and of the European Poker Tour €25,500 High Roller, PokerStars organized a press conference to unveil some important news about the room's operations in Italy.
"During 2015, PokerStars' live poker events in Italy will focus on quality rather than quantity," the country's poker veteran and Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano said as he presented the full calendar of the IPT Season 7.
With four different events to follow the ongoing festival in Malta, the IPT is set to stop in Saint Vincent and Nova Gorica before it heads back to Saint Vincent for the final leg of the year.
"We have reduced the number of events, but we have decided to increase the amount of work and the efforts that we dedicate to each one of them — and this will result in a greater offer of tournaments and cash games."
Here's the full calendar of the remaining stops part of the PokerStars IPT Season 7:
| Date | Location |
|---|---|
| Mar. 10-28 | Malta |
| Jul. 30 - Aug. 3 | Saint Vincent |
| Sept. 10-14 | Nova Gorica |
| Nov. 12-16 | Saint Vincent |
As expected, PokerStars.it live tournament series will not head back to Sanremo, a location that the poker room decided not to include in the calendar also because of the negative feedback received from many players who did not appreciate the services offered by the casino during the past years.
This year, the poker room seems to be fully dedicated to the development of a new PokerStars LIVE poker room at the Casino de la Vallée in St. Vincent, right at the border between Italy and Switzerland.
"The new PokerStars LIVE room in Saint Vincent aims to become a must-go place for Italy's poker lovers, and also represents the most visible sign of a significant partnership between PokerStars and the Casinò de la Vallée," Pagano concluded.
Set to open its door on April 24 with a special €100,000 guaranteed Mini IPT event, the one in St. Vincent is the latest addition to the PokerStars LIVE poker rooms, which already work at full speed in London, Macau, and Manila.
The seventh season of the IPT will also celebrate two different Player of the Year awards, with two leaderboard realized in cooperation with the Global Poker Index (GPI).
A silver level will count points for all the events with a buy-in of €600 or less, whereas a gold level will count points from all the IPT events, regardless of the buy-in fee.
"The GPI is proud of the cooperation established with the IPT, as this allows us to expand in the Southern European region together with a leader in the organization of live poker events," the GPI CEO Alex Dreyfus said.
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