Barely hours after a Caesars Interactive Entertainment press conference announcing the launch date of its WSOP.com intrastate online poker site in Nevada (see previous report), the site went live Tuesday on a small scale for an estimated 12,000 sign-ups who had registered earlier this year.
The early registrants were tipped off by emails which contained links enabling them to download a fresh WSOP.com client, which they reported included access to a real money cashier and the real thing in sit ‘n goes, MTT tournaments and cash games.
The email attracted an immediate, if not exactly overwhelming, positive response according to posts on online poker message boards.
WSOP.com offers a greater variety of poker genres than rival operator Ultimate Poker.com in that it provides a choice of pot-limit Omaha, limit Omaha eight-or-better, limit seven-card stud, and limit seven-card stud eight-or-better.
The ‘official’ launch date for the Nevada public at large remains scheduled for Thursday morning September 19.
Next (October) month the WSOP.com site will host the WSOP.com Online Championships, a nine-tournament series with $500,000 in added money. The nine winners of the Online Championships will compete in a sit-n-go titled the “Online Nine,” which will coincide with the November Nine final table of the World Series of Poker live tournament main event.