World Series of Poker

If you were to limit a professional poker player to only being allowed to play in one set of poker tournaments over the course of the year, I suspect that every single one of them would choose to play in the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

The WSOP is without doubt the largest and most popular set of poker tournaments in the world.

Held annually in Las Vegas, the WSOP lasts a little over a month and continues to attract record numbers of players every year.

There are many reasons why the WSOP enjoys such an iconic status on the poker calendar, but the main three are generally because it's the most established (it first launched in 1968 as an invite-only tournament at the Hotel and Casino in Reno), it attracts the best players and it offers the biggest prizes.

The flagship tournament of the World Series of Poker is The Main Event - a $10,000 no-limit Texas Holdem Tournament where the winner goes home with the largest cash prize in tournament poker and a platinum and diamond bracelet declaring him the poker champion of the world.

Poker professionals see the WSOP as the absolute pinacle of their career, so it's no wonder that most of the all time legends can count themselves as previous winners of the prestigious bracelet.

Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson have both won the main event twice where as other household names such as Phil Hellmuth, Dan Harrington and Stu Ungar have all been declared world champions too.

In 2006, Jamie Gold won his first (and currently only) main event title and went home with $12,000,000 in cash as his first prize - a record that still stands for the largest amount of money to be won in a single poker tournament.

Qualifying for the Word Series of Poker

Virtually every online poker room out there will offer qualifiers for the World Series of Poker - and if they don't, then you should probably find another room to play at.

Ever year, Play Poker Online publishes a detailed list of the WSOP qualifiers that are currently available at each of the poker rooms. Generally speaking, Pokerstars and Full Tilt tend to give away the most seats, with Pokerstars having particular good form in the tournament.

From 2003-2010, Pokerstars ended up supplying the eventual main event champion no less than five times with players such as Greg Raymer, Joe Hachem and Joe Cada all being declared world champion.

Perhaps most famously though, poker noobie Chris Moneymaker won his seat to the 2003 WSOP event by entering a Pokerstars qualifier for just $39 and went on to take down the big prize of $2,500,000, sparking a craze for online poker.