Home / Poker News January 2011 / Looking back at 2010 – NAPT launched
Looking back at 2010 – NAPT launched
Posted by: Jo Martin - Sun, 2011-01-02 09:18
During the last few years, PokerStars have solidified their brand through the launching of a series of live poker tours all over the world. Arguably the most successful such poker tour is the EPT (
European Poker Tour), launched way back in 2004. The initial success story was followed by the Asia Pacific Poker Tour and the Latin American Poker Tour. Before the official launching of each of these series, PokerStars hired a bunch of professional players from the targeted regions. One continent was conspicuously absent from the list: North America. Given that the North American poker market is quite probably the richest and the largest target, the only reasonable explanation for PokerStars’ lack of a North American initiative could be the uncertain legal status of the game in the United States.
2010 was the year that one of the the most populous and poker-wise prolific continents of the world finally got its own PokerStars sponsored tour.
Rumors regarding
PokerStars's plans to launch an EPT-like undertaking in North America had begun well before the official launch.
Poker forums and various news outlets were busy nurturing these rumors, and sure enough, the official announcement came too: at the 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the organizers dropped the bomb: the NAP T would start right there and then.
Hopes for massive NAPT starting fields and prize pools were met almost instantaneously. The 2010 PCA’s main event attracted 1,529 players, who combined buy-ins for a massive prize pool, which allowed the winner of the event, Harrison Gimbel, to walk away with a top prize of $2.2 million.
All in all, the first season of the NAPT featured four stops: one in Las Vegas (at the Venetian), one in Connecticut at the Mohegan Sun, and one in LA at the Bicycle Casino.
The NAPT proved to be an instant hit with the high-profile poker public, including but not limited to the PokerStars crowd.
