There were only four buy-ins in $25,000 PLO at the first historical stage of PokerStars Championship Bahamas. It would be an understatement to say that this is a failure. Main event had 738 buy-ins, while there were 928 registrations the previous time. This all happened even now when he buy-in became lower (for mere $300).

The big experiment of transformation of European Poker Tour and many other local tournament branches into two formats – Championships and Festivals – doesn’t show the best of results yet.

It all started rather good. There were plenty of super highrollers in $100,000 Super High Roller (54 against 58 buy-ins last year) but then they’ve realized that something went wrong.

Leon Tsoukernik, the owner of the biggest poker club in Europe - King's Casino – has recently won the stage of EPT Prague Super High Roller and received €741,100 in prize money. Basically, it was the first win of the Czech entrepreneur on the international arena. Though he often tries his luck in big events.

The story of Leon is amazing. He started out as antique seller back in 90s, he and his partners opened several stores in different corners of the planet. Sometime later, in the beginning of 2000s he got an idea to open his own casino. And he did just that. As a great fan of poker, he started to put emphasis on his favorite card game in the end of 2000s, promoting King's Casino as poker venue for all the players.

The 13^th season of European Poker Tour have separated poker community on two camps. One camp supports the increase of ITM zone from 15% to 20%, the others are very opposed to it, calling it another step to making poker a lottery.

In the middle of August the CEO of Amaya Gaming, Canadian company which owns PokerStars, David Baazov made a statement that he is stepping down from the position as he was accused of inside trading. This is the other story, which began two years ago after the Canadian company bought PokerStars for $$4.9 billion.

Usually it is prohibited to use mobile devices during the hands of tournaments. However couple of days ago room manager and tournament director of Aria told about changes of rules of the famous casino.  Now people can call right in the middle of the hand without any punishment.

 “Players are disallowed to speak on the phone while at the table. Regardless of whether the player is in the hand or not. The call can be made only out of the table”.

This is an excerpt of the European Poker Tour tournament rules. It is said that players can use phones, tablets and laptops but not during the hand.

WSOP is pretty much the same:

EPT Monte Carlo €50,000 Super High Roller winner is Fabian Quoss. Or should we say two Germans: Quoss and Schemion who made a deal before heads-up. 3^rd and 4^th place owners are much more interesting. Aidyn Auyezkanov of Kazakhstan and Murad Akhundov of Azerbaijan took these places respectively.

The final stage of 12^th season of European Poker Tour took place in Monaco. Both super highroller tournaments with €50k and €100k are finished, Main Event is under way. The most expensive events have a nice list of final table participants. New faces aren’t rare here,

Ali Reza Fatehi (€828,500) took the 3rd place in €100k Super High Roller, and that was his first career EPT stage.

This year Polish/Belarussian Dzmitry Urbanovich will play at World Series. Russian-speaking superstar came out of nowhere and has all the chances to rewrite poker history once again. Dima already has EPT record and earned almost $5,000,000 in live tournaments last year.

Imagine some “Garbarnia” (football club from Poland) come to the final of ‎UEFA Champions League to win Barcelona FC for example. Or some unknown young Polish boxer winning Floyd Mayweather by KO in the first round.

Have you imagined?

This is what Dzmitry Urbanovich did in the world of poker. And he is just 20 years old.

Poker players make prop bets as often as they play poker. Sometimes they go beyond the permitted and play with death. So where from do they take a will to jump into the shark tank, or lose ten kilos putting their life on the line.

Life is so short, why do we need more fear and restrictions? We over valuate our fears – it is in our revolution. Man is not running in the jungles or savannas, he has nothing to fear of. The instinct of self-preservation hasn’t been lost. It very often doesn’t give us an opportunity to jump with a parachute or to run a marathon.

Many afraid of public speaking or going to North Korea. These fears are too big in our heads as well. But life could be simpler and more entertaining. Some pros prove it by making prop bets on all the possible and impossible stuff.

However, Antonio Esfendiari’s ban from PCA Main Event 2016 isn’t about fear…

So again here we are with the hardest of tasks to define who the best players of the year were. We couldn’t do that with the great precision without gigabytes of statistics and army of specialists. So we’ve got some data to build an adequate rating of the best poker players of 2015.

Let’s use our logic. We’ll start with the definition of the term ‘best’. What does it take to be the best player? The biggest earner or the most frequent ITMer? Maybe the one who played the biggest number of tournaments or the biggest number of cash tables? What is the main criteria to define world best poker player?

Yeah, we have to forget about cash games, unfortunately. There are many top poker players playing cash only. But cash games always stay aside. Nobody knows who won the biggest money playing cash. No exact, no approximate figures. And we won’t try to think out all the numbers.

Right before the start of Poker Festival in Prague where the best poker player in the world should compete, city authorities have made new amendments to the gambling laws and that have already led to the best city poker clubs to be closed, including Card Casino Prague. In the New Year situation might worsen….

European Union with its intolerance towards gambling came to Prague unexpectedly. Prague was different to Paris, Vienna, Oslo and other big cities in Europe. Serious changes are coming to Bratislava as well in the nearest future.

Major dissatisfaction cause not by the number of poker clubs but with everlasting slot machines halls, the number of which is overwhelming in the city. The issue is in these halls full of entertaining mechanisms. Local regional administration complain about gambling problems among locals.

Prague City Hall adopted an amendment on November. 26^th and it should come into legal force on January, 1^st 2016. But the process of cleaning has started in some places already. More than 200 slot halls are planned to be closed during the next year.

European Poker Tour now has its own Spaniard champion. 106^th title belongs to 20-year-old Adrian Mateos Dias, winner of WSOPE Europe and rising star of world poker.

We’ve already told you about big guys with endless bankrolls who were participating in €100,000 Super High Roller and €50,000 Super High Roller.  Poker veteran Eric Seidel and young Italian Mustapha Kanit became champions of these events.

Today we’ll tell you about two other main events of EPT Grand Final: €10,600 Main Event and €25,500 High Roller.

We’ll start from the Main Event – there was a lot of interesting stuff.

While Main Event in Monte Carlo is just getting started (starting days are over), super high roller have already finished their draught. Tournaments with buy-ins of €100,000 and €50,000 have already been played. And famous Belarusian online Players were on the stage in both of them.

Let’s start with the stage itself. Finishing stage of the 11^th season of European Poker Tour is in Monaco till 8^th of May. 78 tournaments are scheduled! This is one of the biggest poker fests in history (if not the biggest) when we are speaking about the number of tournaments.

The main stage is occupied by the most expensive tournaments - Super High Roller and Main Event with €10,600 buy-in.

Today we are speaking about big boys.

The first stage of European Poker Tour was a great success. Beside some big tournaments, Italian victory in Global Poker Masters and other interesting features, we witnessed a birth of the next poker pro – Dzmitry Urbanovich from Poland.

The stage was played by Poland perfectly well. And that is understatement. The small poker country came on top in very first High Roller tournament with €25,000 buy-in.

Two Polish guys made the final table – Urbanovich and Piotr Franczak. And that is cool already. Both of them are unknowns. Franczak will eventually make it to Top-6, and Urbanovich will go heads-up against very dangerous American Connor Drinan (You might recall him from losing with aces vs. aces in Big One For One Drop).

Only in Deauville one can see a 49-year-old French confectioner singing songs at the playing table and demonstrating moves from tae kwon do. Only there the tournaments are carried out with four blinds and the chip leader stacks don’t worth a penny.

Ah, Deauville! A recreation place for Parisian bohemia, elite, aristocracy. At this popular resort in the north of France an episode of EPT takes place two times a year. For many years already.

Despite the long ago accustomed poker tradition, playing fields at the main event become reduced. In 2012 there were 890 registrations, in 2013 – 782, even less in 2014 – 671 buy-ins, and this year only 592 buy-ins.