What US Poker Sites Can Learn from WCOOP

The World Championship of Online Poker starts in just two days and excitement is building to a fever pitch. Players and fans alike are preparing for one of the largest online poker tournaments that has ever been hosted. This year’s series boasts a whopping 70 events over the course of three weeks so you can expect non-stop action from the opening no limit Hold’em tourney on September 6th until the closing Turbo Hold’em tourney on September 27th.

In between these two, we’ll get to enjoy a slew of High Roller, Omaha, Knockout, 6-Max, and High/Low events, enough that even the most avid fan couldn’t see them all. And of course, the prizes this year are outstanding. PokerStars has promised an incredible $45,000,000 in guaranteed prize money for the course of the championship, with a $10,000,000 main event. I tell you, dear reader, it’ll be one hell of a day if I ever find that many zeros in my bank account.

But that day remains a distant dream as U.S. poker players can only watch from the sidelines while the rest of the world plays for that mountain of money. The fact of the matter is, the World Championship of Online Poker guarantees more prize money than the entirety of the regulated US online poker series. That’s a bitter pill to swallow for American players looking to make a living playing cards. And while some people turn to shady unlicensed US-facing sites, the risk toward one’s funds and legal standing is too great for them to be a viable option.

It seems the only way that American players will ever have a shot at playing for big money is if we ever see a country wide consolidated player pool. More players always means more prize support, and if the legal system were in place, we would almost assuredly see internet poker mega-networks like iPoker, Winning Poker, and PartyPoker swoop in to provide a much desired service.

As it stands, only 3 states, New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada, have legalized internet poker. While a number of other states are working hard toward legalization, many have encountered trouble and stalled among the slow-turning cogs of their state legislatures. Even if a network could consolidate the player bases of these three states in one larger tournament, the resulting prize pool will still be dwarfed by that of the World Championship of Online Poker. In order to even approach those numbers, we are going to need to legalize some sort of nation-wide shared liquidity system. If not, we’ll just have to keep waiting and watching from across the water.