PokerStars has announced a rebranding in their major live tournament tours, renaming their European Poker Tour and other popular regional tours as PokerStars Championships and PokerStars Festivals. The changes might be fully enacted starting in 2017, apart from the PokerStars Festival debut in New Jersey in November of 2016. Which means the 2016 European Poker Tour Prague would be the last EPT event within the tour’s 13-year history.

The rebranding will see PokerStars live events split into two categories, the aforementioned PokerStars Championship events and PokerStars Festival events.

PokerStars Championship events would be the larger tournament series, happen at one of the world’s most prestigious casinos and can typically last 10-11 days. The series will feature huge schedules of as much as 100 tournaments, including a €5,000 (or $5,000 because the case could also be) main event and a lot of cash games.

The first PokerStars Championship event would be the PokerStars Championship Bahamas (formerly referred to as the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure or PCA), to be able to run from Jan. 6-14 on the Atlantis Resort within the Bahamas.

The Bahamas stop is solely the primary of 5 total PokerStars Championship stops already confirmed. The opposite four stops will happen in Barcelona, Monte-Carlo, Macau and Panama. More stops are expected to be announced over the following few months.

The PokerStars Championship may also feature a redesigned Player of the Year competition with a tournament leaderboard for each stop. The winners from each stop could be awarded a VIP package including accommodation and a PokerStars Championship main event buy-in along with entry right into a special invitational tournament featuring $100,000 winner-take-all first prize. Additional information on PokerStars Championships are available on their website.

PokerStars Festival events are shorter live events lasting 6-7 days which can be tailored for recreational players. The events will feature a more concise schedule of tournaments, including a chief event buy-in between $1,000 and $1,500. As of the time of the clicking release there are two confirmed PokerStars Festival stops in New Jersey and London. The brand new Jersey event will run from Oct. 29 – Nov. 6 and can feature 50 tournaments with buy-ins starting from $100 to $5,000 at Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City.

“We are always deliberating how you can bring the most efficient experience to players, in the course of the number of tournaments we sponsor, the benefit of finding information, how we communicate to players and media, and the full experience off and on the felt," said Edgar Stuchly, PokerStars’ Director of Live Events. “The PokerStars Championship and PokerStars Festival events are an enhancement of the prevailing PokerStars sponsored live tours, helping to take our vision for live poker to a complete new level. The PokerStars Championship will include top-tier events so they can visit probably the most exciting and prestigious destinations worldwide, very similar to the much-loved European Poker Tour, while the PokerStars Festival events have a more regional feel, positioned as an action-packed poker vacation.”

In addition to the rebranding of the tours there also are some new technological improvements that are meant to help things run much more smoothly at live events. The PSLive registration system have been enhanced with a web based platform for players to register for tournaments previous to events, there'll be a brand new mobile app for all PokerStars Championship events, and likewise self-serve terminals for registration.

A new single-stop website for everything associated with PokerStars sponsored live events may be going to launch, while a number of the live event social media channels associated with PokerStars current bevy of tours can be merged in January 2017 and renamed @PokerStarsLive. Take a look at the PokerStars Live announcement video below to be informed more:

Read More... [Source: CardPlayer Poker News]