Ever since the World Poker Tour (WPT) proved that traveling live poker circuits sold lots of seats and made lots of money, many online poker sites have been creating their own regional tours in an effort to cash in on some of the success that the WPT has been experiencing.

In just the latest salvo from that particular cannon, Poker Stars has created the United Kingdom and Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT). It is a tour that will start in December 2009 with the Irish Poker Championship and then continued through 2010 with multiple stops in both Ireland and the United Kingdom.

The Irish Poker Championship will also be known as UKIPT Galway from now on and will start on December 11th with qualifiers already being run on the Poker Stars website. Qualifiers will be available well in advance of each of the tournaments actually taking place so that players on Poker Stars can have multiple opportunities to qualify well in advance of the event.

On February 11th, the UKIPT will be in Manchester. April 8th is the start date of the tournament in Coventry. May 13th will mark the beginning of a tournament in Nottingham. June 24th will see the UKIPT Killarney event begin. July 15th will be the date on which the event in Brighton begins and September 9th will see the beginning of the UKIPT Dublin event. There will also be an event in Scotland at some point between the Brighton and Dublin events, but location and date are still to be determined.

One of the advantages of qualifying for the UKIPT events on Poker Stars is that you can actually use your FPP balance to help you enter tournaments. In other words, actual money in the buy-in can be replaced by Frequent Player Points if you have enough of them to cover the entire buy-in. For players that play on Poker Stars regularly for real money amounts, this should not be a difficult feat to accomplish whatsoever.

More information will be made available as the UKIPT begins to take deeper shape.