Kiev Replaces Moscow As EPT Venue

The European Poker Tour has announced it will be kicking off  its Season 6 tour in the Ukrainian capital Kiev instead of its originally planned destination of Moscow.
The official title of the tournament will be the EPT Kiev Sports Poker Championship and will take place between August 17th to 23rd at the Kiev Sports Palace and with a €5,000 buy-in will be the biggest tournament ever to take place inside the Ukraine.
The EPT is sponsored by Pokerstars, the biggest online poker site in the world, and  players who had qualified for the tournament via the site have now been advised that their Moscow packages are now EPT Kiev packages. The EPT announced:
“PokerStars.com advises its players who qualified online for the Moscow event that their packages including buy-in and hotel will be converted to EPT Kiev packages. However, they will also be eligible to take a credit for a future event or receive the cash equivalent value as alternatives.”
Laws banning gambling were introduced in Russia this month and poker was then declassified as a sport making it illegal to play outside any of the four exclusion zones set aside specifically for these activities.The nearest gambling zones are located at least 1000km from Moscow and are yet to be developed into  venues likely to attract a large number of visitors.
Ukraine has been following similar lines to Russia by temporarily banning casinos, slot machines, bookmaking and online gambling and restricting gambling to specific zones. Poker, however, continues to be classified as a sport for now.
The EPT released a statement Sunday which said: “European Poker Tour Limited sincerely apologises to all players who were intending to attend the Moscow event but, unfortunately, these circumstances were beyond our control.”