The lights are on. The dealers are in place. Players are starting to arrive.

The mood is bright. Poker is happening, people. The 12th season of the European Poker Tour has begun!

Shine on!There are eight different events on today’s schedule, the first full one of this year’s EPT Barcelona festival. That means all corners of the spacious poker room in the Casino Barcelona will be brightly lit and filled with players throughout the day and night.

It’s a veritable constellation of competition, you might say, if you were looking for metaphors to employ. And like a bunch of stargazers searching the skies, we most certainly are.

The one tournament twinkling most luminously in the middle of the schedule today is the first big event of the EPT Barcelona festival, the €1K Estrellas Main Event. Day 1a, the first of three Day 1 flights for the tournament, kicks off in just a few at noon today. It’s the star of the schedule (pun intended, for those who know what “estrellas” means).

The start of the EPT’s Season 12 coincides with the conclusion of the Estrellas Poker Tour’s Season 6 which has already enjoyed successful stops this year in Madrid (in March) and Marbella (in June). The Dane Nicki Vestergaard outlasted a tableful of Spaniards to win the title and €106,400 in Madrid, while Isodoro Barrena brought the trophy back to Spain after winning in Marbella for a €150,800 first prize.

There will also be two more Estrellas Main Event satellites running today, a €5K razz event, a couple of no-limit hold’em turbos, another NLHE hypertubo, and both of the Day 1 flights of the Barcelona Poker Cup.

Our eyes will be mostly drawn toward that shimmering Estrellas Main Event, though. Still, we’ll do our best to shine on every crazy diamond, club, heart, and spade and keep you informed with all the many goings-on. We’re as curious as Galileo to discover whether or not this year’s Estrellas Main Event will come anywhere close to the astounding 2,560-entry field of a year ago, then the largest-ever freezeout event in EPT history. Argentina’s Matias Ruzzi topped that enormous field, earning €198,550 after a four-way final table deal.

Matias RuzziSo much to see and explore today. Make like a moth and stick close to what’s beaming out here from the PokerStars blog.

To get all the latest news, chip counts and payouts from EPT12 Barcelona, don’t forget to download the EPT App on both Android or IOS.

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Martin Harris is Freelance Contributor to the PokerStars Blog.

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