Pokerstars made some major news this week in the runup to what promises to be a very busy season, announcing that they have partnered with famed German luxury fashion house Hugo Boss for the production of a range of merchandise and branded products at their major European Poker Tour (EPT) stop this week in Barcelona. Action begins today with a €1,100 satellite and runs through to the first of two hefty and glorious €10,000 events.
The EPT was only off the agenda for a single year after the folk at Amaya made the poor decision to dump the EPT brand and rebrand it as the Pokerstars Festival and Championship for a new series. They’ve thankfully re-thought that one now (honestly, who goes and dumps a successful brand just to innovate?)
Now, the EPT is back, and it is fully expected to be bigger and better than ever, at least at this high-octane Barcelona stop.
Hard on the heels of Barca, Stars are launching not only the legendary World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) series, which breaks all previous records for guarantees at a hefty $70 million combined throughout the series. They are also providing the Galactic Series for those players who cannot access their online player pools, notably in nations such as France and Spain. Some other European nations also have access and are permitted to play the series, which promises to be super-soft and epic.
Overall, the Galactic Series offers €15 million in guarantees over 186 events.
With all this goodness coming up online, Stars tournament regulars are only going to be asking themselves one thing: are the servers up to the task, or will I be playing for hours only to be given a refund? Pokerstars, along with several other similar sites, have suffered numerous server outages in recent days, which have been rumoured to be the result of hackers attempting DDOS attacks. Fingers crossed that the run through the WCOOP will be a smooth one for servers and players alike; that’s one thing, at least, that can never go wrong with live play.
