Even though the World Series of Poker (WSOP) is undoubtedly the most important and most popular poker tournament in the world, many promoters come up with something new all the time. This way, they want to attract an even greater audience and they want to challenge the poker pros with something new. The promoter Harrah’s Entertainment and the TV station ESPN have collaborated for the WSOP 2010: This year there will be a Star-Event of superlatives, the All-Star Tournament of Champions.

Tournament of Champions in a new Guise

The poker tournament Tournament of Champions already took place three times within the WSOP since 2004. However, now it is presented in a new guise – the promoters want to establish it as one of the most popular TV tournaments and they want to make it an annually recurring event by crowd participation. It is surely based on the success of the ever so popular casting shows like “American Idol” or “Pop Idol”. The participants of the tournament are chosen by the voting audience consisting of poker fans all over the world.

All-Star Tournament of Champions: The Rules

The tournament – the $1 Million 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions Freeroll – takes place during the WSOP 2010, from the 27th of June to the 4th of July and it is broadcasted on ESPN on the 3rd of August. The participants will be 27 of the top poker players, including the previous winners of the Tournament of Champions (Annie Duke, Mike Matusow and Mike Sexton) as well as the winners of the WSOP and the WSOP Europe Main Event 2009 (Joe Cada and Barry Shulman). Two other seats in the tournament are given away by the sponsors. However, all the other participants fighting for the first price of $500,000 are chosen by the audience. Until the 15th of June the official WSOP website is open for votes for every person wanting to participate. Every person can vote for 20 players, but is only allowed to vote 1x for every player. The only requirement: every chosen poker pro must be a former winner of a WSOP Bracelet. However, the range of choices is not limited at all: there are 521 poker players owning a WSOP Bracelet that are still living today. Precisely because it is totally uncertain who will be participating in the tournament, it will be very exciting to watch the Tournament of Champions!