The Bluff Poker Tour (BPT) is a 6 month online poker tournament divided into 31 weekly NL Texas Hold'em events. Each is hosted by a different online poker room, but they are all structured the same way. A buy-in of $30 gets you a starting chip count of 2,000. To win an event you'll have to survive 28 levels, with the blinds growing from 10/20 to 100,000/200,000.
By participating in an event and placing in the money you also earn points. The winner of the Bluff Poker Tour is the player who accumulates the largest point total over all weekly events combined. The BPT champion wins a seat in no less than three World Poker Tour main events. Additionally, some BPT sponsors award special prizes. For example, the winner of the September 11th event was awarded a WPT seat by Poker.com.
The BPT is sponsored by quality poker rooms like PokerRoom.com, Absolute Poker, Gaming Club Poker, Full Tilt Poker, Doyles Room and many more. The newest addition to the exclusive club of BPT sponsors is StacksPoker.
The final 31th event of the Bluff Poker Tour is scheduled for early January and hosted by Poker.com. The next event, scheduled for September 15, 9:00 PM, will be hosted by Royal Vegas Poker. For a full schedule of the remaining BPT stops checkout the BPT website.
The Bluff Poker Tour is an initiative from Bluff Poker Magazine. Launched only last year, it's already the biggest poker publication in the US, with a (non-confirmed) circulation of close to 250,000 copies. Eric Morris, co-president of Bluff Magazine, attributes the phenomenal success to a publishing philosophy that focuses more on the players and less on the cards. Competing publications like Card Player Magazine and All In Magazine both place more weight on "hardcore" poker strategy.