Playing online poker offers the poker player from the US plenty of fun, entertainment and of course the chances to win big...very big. It does however also offer players the chance to win their seats to huge land based events, events such as the WSOP, The World Poker Tour, The Punta Cana Poker Classic, Aussie Millions and plenty more major tournaments around the world. Every year at all large events you will see players competing in the big tourneys that have qualified for their seat by playing online and of course the story of Chris Moneymaker is the stuff of legends. Moneymaker won his seat to the WSOP Main Event in 2003 by winning a $39 satellite tourney at PokerStars and went on to win $2.5 Million by winning the whole thing. Things like that don’t happen everyday, however as mentioned, online players fill many a seat at large land based events.
Qualifying for the World Series of Poker
Many US online poker rooms will offer their players the chance to take a seat with the pros at the WSOP Main Event. Each year great US online poker rooms such as Bovada Poker will not only offer seats to the Main Event, but also travel packages that include your flight, hotel and extra spends, and it’s not just the big one that they offer seats to, as usually there will be plenty of qualifiers and satellites to smaller bracelet events too. It’s not easy to qualify, let’s be honest, and there are a lot of players that want to get their seats fro next to nothing, but for a few bucks, it sure is worth a shot. Bovada also offer packages to WPT events too, most recently they sent players to the Montreal event, and of course, all costs were covered.
Don’t forget that with the recent expansion of the WSOP there are now the World Series of Poker Europe and the APAC events to qualify for, and again, you will find satellites available in US online poker rooms.
The Punta Cana Classic with Americas Cardroom
The Punta Cana Poker Classic has been running for 5 years now and many players, and we mean many players, have qualified by taking part in the special online tournaments that are held at Americas Cardroom. The Punta Cana Classic has become a bit of a trademark event for ACR and each year you will find that they push it hard and send many players to the Caribbean in November. It’s a great and growing event and the 2013 event saw the $500,000 guaranteed amount smashed with over $200,000 extra being added to the pot.
You will find that quite often poker rooms, especially Bovada, will offer seats in their very own land based events, and quite often they are the main event of an online poker series. Entry to land based events are popular promotions, they are good for the poker room as they do bring in more players, which in turn is great for the players. Not everyone will do a ‘Moneymaker’ and turn just a few bucks into over $2.5 Million but it’s a whole lot of fun, and you just never know.
