Surely EPT won’t be brought to us by PokerStars.com! According to several twoplustwo.com posters, EPT Packages for San Remo or Madrid won’t be honored by PokerStars in the end. Replies by pokerstars.eu say that they can’t verify if players who won the EPT packages are actually registered in the poker tournaments, although there was one reply by VIP staff that claim otherwise. The current situation is worrying, especially for US players who have already made trip arrangements and are coming over to Europe for the European Poker Tour. I myself haven’t booked a flight yet for Madrid and in all honesty, I don’t see that happening.
Black Friday has seriously affected a lot of poker pros and semi-pros’ lives. A lot of US players complain that they are now jobless in their mid-twenties, having quit college or jobs for a poker career. With the unemployment in USA closing to 10%, they will surely face problems in their future plans. Someone could say that since they are pro poker players, they should have made enough money to both invest and live off. However many players had the biggest portion of their bankroll online, and since the US Department of Justice has seized many of PokerStars and Full Tilt’s bank accounts, they won’t be seeing their funds anytime soon.
News on poker come out and a very small pace and we are all wandering among many poker forums and websites, searching for the latest poker news regarding the safety of our accounts and online poker rooms’ existence. At the same time more than 100,000 players combined continue playing at the two biggest online poker rooms. Maybe there’s light in the end of the tunnel, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I had registered myself in the EPT Grand Final and had picked Westin Palace Hotel for stay via the PokerStars system (regonline.com) on Thursday, just a day before Black Friday. Since that day was the first anyone who had won an EPT package could register themselves, I doubt PokerStars will have made any arrangements for EPT Madrid, either hotel reservations or EPT Main Event registrations. I will just have to wait and see how EPT San Remo works out.
