The last three years of the World Series of Poker begat champions who won their WSOP seats from online poker rooms and satellite tournaments.

This year, quite a lot of internet poker sites invested in this kind of publicity offering qualifying tournaments that awarded free WSOP packages and in turn winning hundreds of online poker players who want to follow the fetes of Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, and Joe Hachem.

Some of the top poker rooms that gave away these golden opportunities include the Bodog Poker WSOP seats, where 700 free seats were at stake. Winners of the weekly qualifying tourneys become eligible to play in the 2006 WSOP under Team Bodog.

Full-Tilt Poker, the home to many poker stars like Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, and Phil Gordon, had 20 Team Full-Tilt Poker WSOP seats to the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Main Event.

Sports InterAction WSOP seats promo sends at least six players to the Main Event. And InterPoker had 100 WSOP seats given away.

Relatively new poker rooms also took a bite of the huge market like CD poker, which had the WSOP 2006 Main Event Super Satellites.

All these sites are spending huge money in hope that one of their sponsored players will win the 2006 WSOP Championship title. That’s going to put the site on the limelight and will boost future registrants no doubt.

Despite online players clinching it three years in a row, the poker pros are a tough line to beat. But if this year’s tournament will prove no different we wonder which poker room will reap the honor of having the world champion under its banner.

Bodog has the biggest number of players with 700, but will numbers be enough to claim the title for the site?

The 2006 WSOP Main Event takes place in six weeks, from July 28-Aug. 10. We won’t know the answer ’til then. For sure, however, many amateur online poker players with the right skills will come out of it and start making a name in the tournament circuit in the days after the WSOP.

Then in the future, they will tirelessly tell the story of how they started their card-playing career from a less than a $100 online poker tournament.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Online Poker, Poker Event, Poker Tournament, Poker Winners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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