The week began with PokerStars celebrating the addition of a new PokerStars-brand official card room to the PokerStars LIVE family. The poker room opened its doors officially at Casino de la Vallée, located in Saint-Vincent, Italy.

The poker room will be inaugurating the Mini Italian Poker Tour (Mini IPT) that features a guarantee prize pool of €100,000. The Saint-Vinent based PokerStars LIVE poker room is unique and fourth of its type in the world like the City of Dreams in Macau and Manila and the one at Hippodrome Casino, London, UK.

Team PokerStars Pro, Luca Pagano said, “The Saint-Vincent based PokerStars LIVE room is going to be the place to go for poker lovers of Italy and we are thrilled to present the best poker to the poker enthusiasts in Northern Italy and also present the pokers players an opportunity to play in a high-quality card room which is trusted and well-run.”
PokerStars and the Casino de la Vallée partnership is the clearly visible symbol of an important association represented Saint- Vincent by the PokerStars LIVE described Marco Trucco, Italy's Country Manager for PokerStars. He further elaborated that there are already two Tour Events in the Italian Poker scheduled for the season and there are tournaments which are regularly offered to pokers on weekly basis which are also offering lots of cash game action.

PokerStars in a media note said that the PokerStars LIVE poker room located in Saint-Vincent is within close proximity of international airports of Milan Malpensa and Turin and is close to the France and Switzerland’s Italian borders and it is aimed at bringing back Italy into the European poker scene. This will be substantiated by trained poker staff and outstanding playing experience and environment.

There were 775 entrants in the opening Mini IPT with a guaranteed prize pool of €100,000 with a buy-in of €330 and the total pool of prize money stood at of €225,525. Jean Marc Bellini, the Swiss player won the event and took the prize money of €42,000.