Satellite tournaments have been the norm in the poker world since the 1980’s, and since that time players have been winning their way into tournaments like the World Series of Poker Main Event for a fraction of the buy-in amount –with Tom McEvoy being the first player to win the Main Event via a live satellite and Chris Moneymaker the first to win via an online satellite.

But what happens when the tournament in question boasts a $1,000,000 buy-in? You cannot simply run a 10-man $100,000 satellite, or even hope to attract enough entrants to run a super-satellite, which made the possibility of a random poker player winning their way into the $1,000,000 buy-in Big One for One Drop WSOP tournament a virtual impossibility. Notice I said “virtual” impossibility, because it appears that 14 separate casinos have decided to join forces and run satellites for the tournament, with each location offering a $23,500 seat to a mega-satellite for the Big One for One Drop that will take place in Las Vegas on June 30th.

Players winning their local satellite will be awarded a $23,500 seat in the satellite as well as hotel and airfare to play in the mega-satellite in Las Vegas. Each location is running the satellite to the Big One for One Drop tournament as a steps event, with the smallest Step being a $500 satellite. The mega-satellite will need 43 players in order to award a seat to the $1,000,000 buy-in event, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that more than one seat could be awarded –I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of top pros trying to win their way in to the event.

Here is a look at the fourteen casino running satellite tournaments for the $1,000,000 buy-in Big One for One Drop tournament:

* The Bicycle Casino (Los Angeles)

* Horseshoe Bossier City (Louisiana)

* Horseshoe Southern Indiana

* Horseshoe Hammond (Chicago area)

* Choctaw Durant (Dallas/Oklahoma)

* Caesars Palace (Las Vegas)

* Horseshoe Tunica (Mississippi)

* Palm Beach Kennel Club (Florida)

* Council Bluffs (Iowa/Nebraska)

* Harrah’s St. Louis

* Harrah’s Chester (Philadelphia)

* Harrah’s New Orleans

* The Lodge Casino (Colorado)

* Canterbury Park (Minnesota)

More information on the local satellites can be found at the WSOP website.

The tournament itself will be a WSOP bracelet event (with the WSOP awarding a first of its kind Platinum Bracelet) and currently has 22 entrants registered, including Guy Laliberté, Bobby Baldwin, Phil Ruffin, Andy Beal, Patrik Antonius, Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Tom Dwan, Tony Guoga, Jonathan Duhamel, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Sean O’Donnell, and Dan Shak.

$111,111 of each entry will be donated to the OneDrop charity created by Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, dedicated to bringing clean drinking water to all corners of the globe.

Tags: Bicycle Casino, Bossier City Louisiana, Caesars Palace Las Vegas, Chicago Area, Choctaw, Chris Moneymaker, Horseshoe Bossier City, Live Satellite, Man 100, Palace Las Vegas, Poker Main Event, Poker Player, Poker World, Southern Indiana, Time Players, Tom McEvoy, Tunica Mississippi, Virtual Impossibility, World Series of Poker, World Series of Poker Main Event

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2012 at 8:48 am and is filed under Poker News. 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.