The first big event on the poker calendar for this year is going to be the 10th edition of the prestigious live poker event PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA). The tournament is scheduled to begin on Jan 5, Saturday and to end on Jan 14, Monday. The highlights of the PCA are going to be the $25k High Roller Tournament, the $100k Super High Roller Tournament, and the $10k Main Event.
Part of the European Poker Tour (EPT), the PCA attracts a large number of professional poker players to Atlantis Casino Resort, Paradise Island every year.
As usual, members of Team PokerStars Bertrand Grospellier, Eugene Katchalov, Daniel Negreanu, Isaac Haxton, and Jason Mercier will be taking part in the PCA $100k Super High Roller this year.
Neil Johnson, PokerStars live specialist, said:
There is no other live 10-day event where you will find the variety and number of games that the PCA offers. It really is a unique event in terms of the amount of poker and the range of buy-in levels available.
The first PCA champion ever was Gus Hansen, and the first PCA, which was held in 2004, was the only one to be held on a cruise ship. The event, which was organized as part of the World Poker Tour (WPT), was so successful that PokerStars got into an agreement with the government of Bahamas to organize the event annually at Atlantis Casino Resort.
The official website of the PCA described the second PCA as follows:
The 2005 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure marked the first time that the event was held at the Atlantis in The Bahamas – the location that’s been its home ever since. There were 461 players in total, generating a total prize pool of $3,487,200. British player John Gale took the title, along with first place prize money of $890,600.
The PCA of 2007 was the last time the PCA was held as part of the WPT. The player field had become as large as 937, and it was Ryan Daut who emerged as the PCA champion and won a large prize of $1,535,255.
In 2008, the PCA was held as part of the EPT for the first time. The PCA Main Event had a player field of 1,136, enabling the organizers to reward the winner with a purse of around $2 million. The champion of PCA 2008 turned out to be Bertrand Grosspellier, a French poker player.
Player Poorya Nazari wins the largest prize ever to be awarded in PCA history—$3 million—in PCA 2009; and Harrison Gimbel, a 19-year-old Canadian poker player, converted $1k into $2.2 million in PCA 2010. The PCA was more glorious than ever in 2011 with a player field of 1,560 and Galen Hall winning the title. In 2012, John Dibella, an amateur poker player from the US won a huge prize of $1.775.
PCA 2013 will have 40 events, and the final tables of the Main Event, the High Roller, and the Super High Roller will be shown on EPT Live.
