When Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey and other pro poker stars sit down at a World Series of Poker table this year, it’s likely they’ll be facing at least one member of Team Bodog. The online gaming giant announced this week that it will be qualifying more than 700 players for the WSOP this summer.
“We were extremely pleased with how Team Bodog fared at last year’s World Series of Poker,” says Calvin Ayre, Founder and CEO of Bodog.com. “With the explosion in the popularity of poker and with so many more people exposed to the great game, we anticipate this year’s series to be one of the most entertaining yet.”
Last year, Bodog.com guaranteed its online poker players over 70 seats at the WSOP, a Las Vegas-based series of tournaments held over the course of six weeks. This year, Bodog.com will be qualifying over 10 times that amount of players for preliminary and main WSOP events. Bodog.com players who qualify for the Main Event this year will be accorded a prize package that includes a US $10,000 tournament buy-in, US $2,500 in travel expenses, access to the WSOP VIP Lounge and US $1,000 worth of Bodog gear.
There are a number of ways for tournament hopefuls to qualify for the WSOP. Players can compete through the Sit&Go Stages tournaments. For as little as a $1.10 (or 75 poker points) players can wín their way to the next stage all the way to a seat in the WSOP. Along with the Stages tournaments, players can compete in a host of weekly single table and multi-table qualifier tournaments for their tickets to the WSOP.
“Online poker has served as a learning platform for many players who have now started to take part in poker tournaments in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and elsewhere,” Ayre says of the synergistic relationship between online and land-based poker. “The online poker rooms are less intimidating for many new players and serve as a stepping stone for their move to land-based poker rooms.”
With aggressive tournament schedules and an array of bonus programs, Bodog.com Poker offers US $2.5 million in guarantees each month, including a weekly US $100,000 tournament.