Thanks to legalisation and the presence in Nevada of licensed and regulated online poker websites, this week has seen the start of the first ever World Series of Poker internet competition, with the winner qualifying for a WSOP winner’s bracelet.
In a way, it represents a coming of age development for online poker, and one that will attract a lot of attention both online and offline.
Event 64 is the $1,000 buy-in WSOP.com Online NLHE contest played mainly online. It is restricted to online players within the borders of the state of Nevada, which inevitably constrained the size of the field.
Nevertheless, the event attracted 905 entries and generated a prize pool of $859,750 from which the winner will cash around $197,000.
When we went to press Friday morning the internet action was paused after nine hours of play had distilled the field to six players.
These will travel to the Rio in Las Vegas to compete live on Saturday PST (US Independence Day).
At present “imgrinding” holds the chip lead on 2.57 million, pursued by “casedismissed” on 2.29 million, with the other four some way behind.