April and May are the time of year when most poker players start turning their focus toward the biggest event of the year, the WSOP held in Las Vegas at the Rio hotel and casino.
This enormous event takes place from the end of May until the being of July every year and encompasses more than 50 separate events.
These events range from $1,000 buy-ins all the way up to $10,000 for the Main Event and $50,000 for the World Championship of H.
O.
R.
S.
E.
The best way to play in these events without having to pay the entire buy in is to qualify for them online at the poker site of your choosing.
Nearly all online poker sites will offer qualifying packages for the WSOP.
This year, 2009, promises to be even better in terms of the values being offered for players.
Sites such as Full Tilt and PokerStars will offer literally hundreds of prize packages for the Main Event which include $10,000 for the buy in, spending money, accommodations, and flight money in some cases.
The values of the packages for the Main Event start at around $12,500 and go up from there depending on the site that you are playing on.
The bigger sites, such as Full Tilt and PokerStars and also, Titan Poker for international players, will be offering more events and will send more players to the WSOP, but no matter where you choose to play, you will find these qualifying packages available.
Most of the direct buy-ins to these tournaments will be at about $500+$35 to get into the tournament and then the amount of players who will win packages will be determined by the number of entrants.
The more entrants, the more winners.
If paying $500+$35 doesn't appeal to you, there will be satellites to these qualifying tournaments happening every day that you can get into for as little as $1 or you can spend the Frequent Player Points that you have built up over the course of the last year on your particular site.
This is a great way to end up at the Main Event without it having cost you a cent! The biggest thing to watch out for when playing these qualifying events is that you don't end up spending too much money trying to get in.
In other words, set yourself a limit of what you are willing to spend to try to get qualified and don't exceed it.
It does no good to qualify by spending more money than you would have spent by buying directly into the event in Vegas! For those poker players who don't want to play No Limit Hold'em in the Main Event, there are, of course, many other events with poker disciplines such as Omaha, Omaha hi-lo, H.
O.
R.
S.
E.
, RAZZ, Stud, and Stud hi-lo.
These event range from $1,000 buy-ins to $5,000 buy-ins and these are also prize packages available on some sites to get you into these events at a huge savings as well.
For example, Poker Stars offers their "Race for the Bracelet" promotion where a couple times a day you can buy into a qualifying tournament for either $26 or $75 and the winners (again depending on the number of entrants) are awarded a $2,000 prize package to be spent buying into the event of their choice.
Obviously, $26 leveraged into $2k is a good deal.
There are also ladies only events at the WSOP and senior events as well, so there is something available for everyone.
So, if you are an online poker player with your sites set on the 2009 WSOP, now is the time to start scouring the various sites for good deals to get you qualifying without spending much money.
After all, why spend $10k if you don't have to?