PokerStars News: EPT Kyiv, Extreme WCOOP Satellites, and Int’l Legal Intrigue

This week we told you about PokerStars rumored new software upgrade, but that is only the tip of the iceberg of PokerStars news out this week.

As of this week, satellites have begun for the PokerStars European Poker Tour Season 6 opener in the Ukraine, EPT Kyiv. The event itself runs August 18 – 23 and includes a bevy of exciting side events as well. A pair of special satellites run this coming weekend, with a tournament on August 8 (Sat.) awarding 5 prize packages into the event, and a Frequent Player Points event on August 9 (Sun.) costing 10,000 FPP to enter.

Meanwhile, in other PokerStars news, this EPT Kyiv event is replacing the originally scheduled 2009 PokerStars Russian Open, which had to be suddenly canceled when the Russian government instituted new gambling regulations. And speaking of governements and gambling regulations, the Italian government has forced PokerStars (and all other offshore poker sites) to pull out of their country. Now only poker sites with servers located inside Italy’s borders can accept Italian players. Thankfully for PokerStars, they have an Italian-only version of the site. The only downside? Only Italians can compete there, ruling out all the other competition dispersed elsewhere around the world. (Clearly the U.S. government isn’t the only one making it hard on online poker players and sites.)

Also coming out of PokerStars is word of Extreme Satellites into the 2009 World Championship of Online Poker. The 2009 PokerStars WCOOP starts September 3 and runs through a main event on September 30, but already players can win seats in the event through PokerStars many satellites. These new Extreme Satellites promise to award as many as 100 seat or more each, guaranteed, with buy-ins to satellite qualifiers as low as $7.50.