European Poker Tour (EPT): History, Winners & Legacy
The European Poker Tour has been the continent’s flagship live poker series since 2004 – the tour that turned European poker into a genuine rival to the American WSOP scene, and that launched a long list of careers along the way.
Origins
The EPT was founded in 2004 by John Duthie, a British television director and winner of the first Poker Million tournament, who set out to build a European answer to the American World Poker Tour. The debut season featured seven No-Limit Hold’em stops broadcast across the continent, immediately raising the profile of European tournament poker.
The tour grew steadily through iconic stops including Monte Carlo, London, Barcelona, Prague, and Berlin, drawing bigger fields and richer prize pools with each passing season.
Defining Moments
Coren Mitchell became the first woman to win an EPT title at EPT London in 2006, then made history again in 2014 by winning EPT Sanremo for €476,100 – becoming the first player, male or female, to win two EPT Main Events.
Pieter de Korver’s €2,300,000 win at the 2009 Grand Final in Monte Carlo remains the largest first-place prize in EPT Main Event history.
Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier’s $2,000,000 win at the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure came during the period when that event counted as an EPT stop – one of the tour’s biggest-ever individual scores.
PokerStars temporarily replaced the EPT with global “PokerStars Championship” and “Festival” branding in 2017. Player and fan pushback brought the EPT name and format back the following year.
Season-by-Season Main Event Winners
The EPT has crowned hundreds of champions since 2004. A selection of Main Event and Grand Final results by season:
Season 1 (2004-2005)
| Event | Winner (Country) | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| EPT Barcelona | Alexander Stevic (Sweden) | €80,000 |
| EPT London | John Shipley (UK) | £200,000 |
| EPT Dublin | Ram Vaswani (UK) | €93,000 |
| EPT Deauville | Brandon Schaefer (USA) | €144,000 |
| EPT Grand Final (Monte Carlo) | Rob Hollink (Netherlands) | €635,000 |
Season 3 (2006-2007)
| Event | Winner (Country) | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| EPT London | Victoria Coren (UK) | £500,000 |
| EPT Dublin | Roland De Wolfe (UK) | €554,300 |
| EPT Grand Final (Monte Carlo) | Gavin Griffin (USA) | €1,825,010 |
Season 5 (2008-2009)
| Event | Winner (Country) | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| PokerStars Caribbean Adventure | Poorya Nazari (Canada) | $3,000,000 |
| EPT Grand Final (Monte Carlo) | Pieter de Korver (Netherlands) | €2,300,000 (EPT record) |
Season 11 (2014-2015)
| Event | Winner (Country) | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| EPT Prague | Stephen Graner (USA) | €969,000 |
| EPT Sanremo | Victoria Coren Mitchell (UK) | €476,100 (first two-time EPT champion) |
| EPT Grand Final (Monte Carlo) | Adrian Mateos (Spain) | €1,082,000 (first Spanish EPT Main Event winner) |
Recent Seasons (2022-2025)
| Event | Winner (Country) | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| EPT Barcelona (2022) | Giuliano Bendinelli (Italy) | €1,491,133 |
| EPT Cyprus (2023) | Volodymyr Palamar (Ukraine) | $1,002,500 |
| EPT Barcelona (2024) | Stephen Song (USA) | €1,290,386 |
| EPT Prague (2024) | Pedro Marques (Portugal) | €963,450 (event record) |
| EPT Barcelona (2025) | Thomas Eychenne (France) | €1,200,000 |
This is a selection, not the complete season-by-season record – the EPT runs multiple stops across Europe every season, and the tour continues to add cities and drop others as the live tournament landscape evolves. Copenhagen, for example, was a regular stop through 2012 before being dropped from the schedule as the tour’s routing changed.
Where the EPT Fits Today
Two decades on, the EPT remains the reference point for European live tournament poker – the combination of iconic venues (Monte Carlo and Barcelona in particular have anchored the calendar for most of its history) and consistently deep fields keeps it near the top of most touring professionals’ schedules. For the American equivalent, see our guide to the World Series of Poker.
