Gambling News - August 2005 Edition
"World's Largest Online Poker Tournament Gains Popularity"
World Championship of Online Poker set for September in San Jose, Costa Rica.
When we think of gambling, we think Las Vegas. This city is also home to
the world’s largest poker tournament, the World Series of Poker, and drew
more than 35,000 tournament players and more than one hundred million dollars
in prizes. Now we are waiting for another large poker tournament, the World Championship
of Online Poker, which, however is hosted in San Jose, Costa Rica.
The World Championship of Online Poker is an annual online poker championship
hosted by online gambling business, PokerStars.com, and is set to take
place in September. It is the fourth such annual championship to date.
While the World Championship of Online Poker is small change compared
to the World Series of Poker, the amount of money involved in the tournament
is not to be sneezed at. The tournament includes fifteen individual poker
events including a final event of no-limit hold ‘em and is expected
to draw more than 10,000 players. The prize pool for the final event starts
at 2.5 million dollars. The championship playoffs in Las Vegas, by comparison,
start at more than fifty million dollars in prizes.
Even with the large differences in the number of participants and prize
money, the World Championship of Online Poker comes in second in size
only to the World Series of Poker and is gaining in popularity.
According to the World Championship of Poker spokesman, Nolan Dalla,
the online tournament is not aiming to compete with the Las Vegas tournament,
but the prize money for the online championship ranks ninth worldwide. "We
have an entirely different demographic," Dalla said. “A lot
of the people we are attracting cannot travel to Las Vegas." He added, “The
No. 1 attraction is convenience. It's much more convenient to log on and
play from Belgium or Baton Rouge. There's no airfare and no hotel room
... you don't have to get dressed. You don't even have to tip the dealer."
The online final game costs $2,500 as opposed to the final event in Las
Vegas which costs $10,000 or more. Online games can be played twice as
fast as off-line games and at least forty percent of the players are from
outside of the United States. “This tournament caters for the online
player,” says Dalla.
Despite the strong similarities in the way both tournaments are run,
there are also significant differences. As in the World Series of Poker,
poker games are held daily and winners of each event receive a gold bracelet.
The main differences lie in the cost of the final events, the speed with
which the games are played and the audience participation.
Back to Online Gambling News Home
