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Long considered to be one of the golf capitals of the world, Vilamoura, Portugal is once again one of the favorite stops on the European Poker Tour this year. Last season, Vilamoura was a very successful stop on the tour with a prize pool of around 1.5 million Euros and hundreds of the top professional poker players around the world in attendance. Last season, 322 players competed for the final table - which consisted of memorable play by pros such as Jan Skampa and Jeff Sarwer along with the French poker veteran Michel Abecassis. In the end, Antonio Matias was successful and took home a total prize package of a little more than 404,000 Euros.

This year, Vilamoura is once again a very successful tournament – after only being played for a total of two years. So successful is the tournament, in fact, that this year will break the record for the largest poker tournament taking place in the city of Vilamoura with 384 participants. At the beginning of day 2 on August 30th, Leonid Bilokur was the chip leader as one of the PokerStars qualifiers from Russia – holding 161,000 in chips. Following behind on day 2 were Sam Trickett with a little over 132,000 in chips and Dario Minieri with just over 131,000.

Team PokerStars site professionals are among the stable of about 220 remaining poker players in the tournament. Among these players are David Williams, Ruben Visser and Richard Toth. The tournament at Vilamoura will continue until September 2nd before ending this record breaking year.

Other events featured at Vilamoura during the poker tournament include the Vilamoura Golf Poker competition from September 1st to the 2nd and various other opportunities for sun bathing and golf by the participating poker players and their guests.