Since the start of live coverage of poker tournaments during the beginning of 21st century, the number of the aficionados of poker has seen a steady increase with each passing year. These poker tournaments not only provide an amazing opportunity for the poker players to win big, but also a chance to travel all over the world. This ever increasing craze of participating in such events started with the historic win of Chris Moneymaker who won $2,500,000 in 2003 by beating more than eight hundred players to reach World Series of Poker main event. Nowadays there are hundreds of such events managed throughout the world but there are some which still stand out due to the associated high prizes and their location at exotic places. Some of the outstanding and most popular tournaments from all over the world include the following.
World Series of Poker (WSOP)
This tournament first came into existence in 1970 under the tutelage of Benny Binion who invited seven of the best players of that time at Horseshoe Casino for a poker tournament. Since that time, WSOP is held each year in Las Vegas and thousands of participants from all over the world participate in this mega event. The winners of the events of this tournament are awarded with WSOP bracelets and cash prizes. The size of the monetary prizes depends upon the number of participants and buy-in amount for each event. The most popular event of this tournament is “$10,000 No Limit Hold’em main event” that attracts thousands of poker players from all corners of the globe.
Last year, Qui Nguyen from Nevada was awarded with a prize of $ 8,005,310 for winning the 2016 World Series of Poker main event.
Aussie Millions
Aussie Millions is the common name used by poker players for the Australian Poker Championship. This poker tournament is held every year at Crown Casino in Melbourne. This series is considered as the richest poker tournament of the southern hemisphere and provides awards of more than seven million Australian Dollars. This series came into existence in 1998 for a Limit Hold’em tournament with a buy in of A$ 1000 and 74 participants. Previous year Aussie Millions main event had a buy in of A$ 10,600 and 74 participants, taking the prize pool to A$ 7,320,000. The other two events which are “High Roller Winners” and “Super High Roller Winners” had total prize pools of A$ 4,018,000 and A$ 3,920,000 respectively.
PokerStars Caribbean Adventure
This mega poker event takes place each year and is sponsored by PokerStars.com. This tournament was first organized in 2004 and still continues to be one of the most popular extravaganzas followed by millions of poker enthusiasts from all over the world. The pokerStars Caribbean Adventure is the only one of the few popular poker tournaments which is annually televised by reputed sports channels such as ESPN. There are number of events incorporated in this tournament with the Main Event as the most popular one. The highest prize pool for this event was collected during 2011 with the whole kitty reaching up to $15,132,000. This tournament is considered as the biggest poker fiesta far away from Las Vegas supporting richest prizes for the participants.