This new Australia New Zealand Poker Tour will initially feature three stops in Sydney, Queenstown, and beginning this February, in Adelaide. Each first season event will start with a buy-in of $3,000 or less and many top local players like Eric Assadourian, Grant Levy and Tony Hachem, have already expressed interest in attending, according to the tour’s new site, anzpt.com.

PokerStars.com, the internet’s largest poker room, continues to break attendance records online and has found serious success with many of their live tours as well. Given the recent prosperity of events like the 2009 Aussie Millions, there appears to be a very good chance this new Australia New Zealand Poker Tour will be no exception to that trend.

If the poker boom really is ebbing, as many seem to believe, perhaps someone should mention it to PokerStars because they haven’t seemed to notice.

To join PokerStars, the web’s biggest online poker room, just click here.

Story by Mark Anderson