The World Poker Tour has quickly gained fame in the poker community by offering huge prize pools, usually in the millions of dollars. World Poker Tour events have a typical buy-in of $5,000 or $10,000. These hefty buy-ins can deter online poker players from trying their hand in such high-stakes, highly publicized land-based tournaments. The good news is that you dont have to show up to one of these events with $10,000 buy-in cash in your pocket. Many major tournaments offer satellite tournaments. These satellites are often single table events and have a buy-in that is usually about 1/10th of the buy-in to the main tournament. A player can win entry into the main tournament by paying the $1000 for a satellite event and winning it. Following the lead of the World Series of Poker, many online poker rooms offer amateurs the chance to qualify for a WPT tournament by playing while playing online poker from home. Often times, these online satellites have a substantially smaller buy-in than live satellites (usually $10 or $25, but they can be as much as $100 or even $500). These larger multi-table satellites, give regular online players an inexpensive chance to qualify for a World Poker Tour. If you want to qualify online for a WPT event, first determine the specific WPT event that you would like to qualify for. Then, look up which online poker sites offer qualifying tournaments for that specific WPT event. Several of the most reputable online poker rooms sponsor specific World Poker Tour events and it would be necessary to play at those online sites to qualify for a particular WPT event. Ultimate Bet sponsors UltimateBet Aruba Classic. Poker Stars sponsors the PokerStars Caribbean Poker Adventure. Party Poker sponsors the Party Poker Million. Other online poker rooms may not sponsor a tournament but still offer qualifying online satellites. Europoker offers qualifying slots for the World Poker Tour Paris event. Bodog has had qualifying tournaments for the LA Poker Classic at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles and the WPT Championship Event in Las Vegas. Paradise Poker has had qualifying satellites for the WPT Legends of Poker event held in Los Angeles. After determining which online poker room offers the qualifying tournaments for the specific WPT event that you are interested in, register an account at that poker site. Usually the minimum deposit is $25-50. Online payment services can fund your account instantly. Your next step is to check the tournament schedule in order to see what times the WPT qualifying events are held. Find out when the tournament registration opens. Then, all you have to do is register for the tournament and youve taken your first step to becoming the next Chris Moneymaker or Greg Fossilman Raymer. |
