New poker tour introduced in Europe

European poker players now have another option for live poker tournament play with the Showdown Poker Tour (SPT).

The tour features six tournament in six different cities, with the final one being a €10,000 buy-in event in Hamburg, Germany.

The inaugural event of the tour took place in early May at The Gutshot Card Club in London. Swede Mats Gavatin won the €5,000 buy-in event after going head-to-head with Barny Boatman from the Hendon Mob.

All four of the Hendon Mob – Ross and Barny Boatman, Joe Beevers and Ram Vaswani – are signed up to play at the SPT events.

They said on their site "The Hendon Mob are delighted to announce our support for and participation in the Showdown Poker Tour. We believe that the advent of the SPT is the best news in European poker for some time. This is a tour designed by people who understand the game and designed it with the interests of players very much in mind."

The goal of the SPT is to create a poker tour truly for the players. It's all about being truly independent, more "down to earth," having better venues and a player friendly structure.

There are also opportunities for players to qualify for the tournaments online which means everyone has a chance to participate, plus the size of the buy-ins ensures a big prize for the players.

"We believe all these things as well as TV coverage and the encouragement of commercial sponsorship will attract players from around the world and make the Showdown tour a worthy competitor to existing televised tours," the Hendon Mob said.

Each tournament has a limited number of seats and it's possible to secure a seat through www.sdpt.com or through one of the forthcoming online qualifier tournaments.



courtesy of Sarah Polson

News Added: 30 May, 2006

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