WSOP Online Championships Kick Off Huge Nevada Online Poker Schedule
The World Series of Poker is just around the corner, and this year card players from all around the world will descend upon Las Vegas, Nevada with another poker playing option. Legal online poker is now offered for anyone located inside Nevada’s state lines. You can learn more about some of these options in our Online Poker Reviews guide. That means that this year’s physical card players have virtual gambling options if things don’t go their way at the “real world” tables. Everything kicked off with the High Roller Series that began on May 25 and ran through May 31. Buy-ins began at $215 with satellites available and guarantees from $10,000 to $30,000. The High Roller Series Main Event was held on May 31 with a $530 buy-in and guaranteed $50,000 prize pool.
WSOP Online Satellites Galore
Nevada online poker sites have joined offshore poker rooms in providing satellite contests which deliver a $10,000 WSOP Main Event entry fee to the winner. Similar to the micro-satellite Chris Moneymaker won years ago that propelled him to a Main Event win and poker history, one satellite offered by WSOP.com during their regular weekend tournaments saw online Nevada poker player pongpong turn a $215 entry fee into a 2014 WSOP $10,000 Main Event seat. A total of 36 card players entered that tournament, creating an attractive overlay of $2,800.
World Series of Poker Online Championships Begin
Also offered is the WSOP Online Championships which started on June 1. 15 events are offered over two weeks, covering No Limit Texas Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha. Buy-ins begin at $55 and go as high as $530. Again, satellites are offered for these Nevada online poker tournaments, with guaranteed prize pools running from $5,000 all the way up to $200,000. Bovada and several other offshore online poker rooms are currently promoting special welcome bonuses and other incentives based around the globally popular WSOP spectacle as well. Bovada stands as the biggest and most popular US Internet poker room on the web. Learn more about this US friendly virtual poker room in our Bovada Poker review.
Ultimate Poker Pays $29,000 Over the Weekend
Down the Internet highway from the WSOP site is the Ultimate Poker cyber offering. UP ran five major tournaments over this past weekend, with 198 card players battling it out for 34 prizes. More than $29,000 was paid out, and due to low online attendance, more than half of the prize money was created in overlays. When a poker room guarantees a specific amount of money in a tournament, they must pay that amount of prize money out, even if player entry fees do not generate the required cash. This is known as an overlay in poker terminology, and out of the $29,000 UP paid out this past weekend in its tournaments, $16,200 was overlay money.
4BETFold and hypnotix.lv each won $5,000 as the biggest winners over the weekend at Ultimate Poker in the new Chase the Dream tournament series. Run over the next four weeks, Chase the Dream pays $5,000 apiece to both first and second place winners. An extremely attractive buy-in of just $25 saw 74 players fighting for 18 of prize spots, from $50 on up to $5,000. The regular $10,000 Sunday UP tournament saw m1a1tank19k winning $2,900 in the $100 buy-in event. In related news, for the first time since 2006, the WSOP Main Event winner will pocket eight figures. $10 million has been guaranteed for first place in the WSOP Main Event this year, which makes Nevada online poker satellites and qualifiers all that more attractive.