The European Masters of Poker pulls in to Barcelona, Spain today as up to 500 players will take part in the €1,150 buy-in event until Saturday August 1. The main event will be the largest yet on the tour with an estimated €500,000 prize pool. The previous stop on the tour, Prague, attracted 258 players and generated a prize pool of €258,000.

Live reports from Barcelona will be available at http://www.pokeri.com/en/forum/live-reporting-f5/. The final leg of the tour will see EMOP land in Vittoriosa, Malta from September 23 to 26 where up to 500 players will compete in the €1,500 + €150 buy-in event which is likely to see the prize pool swell to €750,000

Qualification for the Maltese grand final is now underway across the Entraction network where poker players can qualify for as little as €2 or 200 VIP-points. Premium partners for the European Masters of Poker are i4poker, Pokerihuone, Pinnacle Sports, KickOffPoker, DailyPoker, GoldWin Poker and 24hPoker.

There are nine daily satellites to the €100 Sunday Main Qualifier (19:40 CET) and five daily satellites to the €100 Wednesday Main Qualifier (19:40 CET). A total of at least six packages are guaranteed in the prize pool each Sunday while four packages are guaranteed each Wednesday. Players can also buy in directly through their Entraction account.

EMOP, held at Casino Barcelona, will also feature a €500 + €50 pot-limit Omaha side event and a €300 + €30 no-limit hold’em side event.
An additional benefit of the European Masters of Poker is the leader board competition where players can win additional prizes beside the regular prize pool. Five percent is taken from each tournaments prize pool and is placed in the leader board prize pool. The top 15 overall players will receive cash prizes after the five tournaments are completed.
The estimated first prize is €25,000. In addition to this, the winner will receive a watch worth €10,000 if the player has earned 25,000 VIP-points from January 1st 2009 until the start of the last tournament.

The final table in Prague included EMOP Bulgaria winner Reuven Dayan from Israel who currently tops the leader board with 55 points followed by Sami Ollia from Finland on 45 points and EMOP Estonia winner Joanna Pyysing also from Finland.

The current prize pool is €40,580 and with between 20 and 30 points awarded for a top 15 place the race to top the leader board remains wide open.