Who can resist the allure of an award ceremony what with all the glamour, prestige and canapés? Well, after four full seasons of the European Poker Tour PokerStars has created the first ever EPT Awards to be held in Barcelona, Spain on the eve of the first leg of the tour’s fifth season.

Staged at the glittering Opium Mar location in downtown Barcelona the game’s best will descend for hearty congratulations and camaraderie before making their way to Casino Barcelona the next afternoon to resume the day job of folding, raising and chip stacking.

The awards recognise the very best of the EPT; the nominees are in place. All that’s left to do is to put the winner’s names into a gold envelope and hand them to a glamorous starlet in a long and expensive dress to announce the winner to the world. Failing that a fellow poker pro in sports shoes and a baseball cap will do the same. Either way it will prove to be quite a night.

So what awards are up for grabs and who has been nominated? They include...

EPT San Remo winner Jason Mercier

EPT Dortmund winner Mike McDonald

EPT Copenhagen winner Tim Vance

Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano

Awards in the two more categories, People’s Choice and the Poker Writers Award, will be decided by the public and media respectively. The winners of those above will be selected by a panel of judges made up of Team PokerStars Pros Vicky Coren and EPT founder John Duthie, as well as John Caldwell, Editor in Chief of Poker News, and former PokerStars poker room manager Lee Jones.

It all leads to an exciting night in Spain before the real business of EPT poker gets underway for another season. We’ll have all the detail of that and the EPT Awards ceremony here on the PokerStars.net blog.