Everybody knows that the World Series of Poker offers the most money in all of poker. The 2009 Main Event alone offered players over $60 million, and the champion Joe Cada took home over $8.5 million of this prize pool. With so much cash involved, thousands of people have been trying to win WSOP prize packages through the extremely cheap satellites at 888poker.com. 

But winning a free seat in the WSOP is only part of the challenge since you must also be able to take care of business in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, most people aren’t prepared when they get to the WSOP, and they don’t even make it off the first table of the event they’re in. Obviously you don’t want to be one of the fish that waste an opportunity at the WSOP so you should start practicing. 

Every year the WSOP listens to feedback from participants so they can make improvements on poker’s biggest stage. And one of the biggest complaints they have had over the years was that players weren’t given enough chips to start with. Because of this, the World Series of Poker starts players off with deeper stacks so they get more for their buy-in.

That’s why the best way to practice for the WSOP is by playing in as many deep stack tournaments as possible. You should obviously play in live deep stack tournaments to simulate WSOP conditions, but you also need to play in online tourneys too. Online poker tournaments are more convenient, and they give people more opportunities to practice fundamental poker play. 

When playing in deep stack tournaments for practice (and to make more money), you should play as if you’ve bought into an actual WSOP event. This means valuing your tournament buy-in, and avoiding the temptation to play like a maniac in order double up early on.

The blinds won’t be a factor in the early stages so there’s no need to risk busting out to steal blinds and win small pots. With that being said, you should still go for small pots when the opportunity arises; just make sure to stay out of the way of maniacs. The key is to pick your opportunities with care while gradually trying to increase your chip stack.

If you have dreams of reaching the final table of a WSOP event, then you’d better practice playing final table conditions. Of course, practicing for a final table isn’t easy since you can’t just buy your way onto the last table of a tournament. However, you can get close to simulating a final table by playing in sit and go tournaments.

Sit and go’s will give you the chance to be in a situation where everything is decided on a single table. Plus, as players bust out of the SNG, you will get to practice playing on a short-handed table. The only drawback to playing SNG’s is that everyone starts with the same chip stack instead of a multi-table tournament where chip stacks all vary at the beginning.

As mentioned before, you can get great practice in for the WSOP by playing online tournaments – this is especially true when practicing for the final table. However, you need to play some live events at some point if you are really serious about getting ready. 

Live poker tournaments are the only place where you’ll get the opportunity to look for physical tells, work on not giving tells off yourself, and get a feel for how much slower live tourney play is. And as mentioned before, you’ll want to stick to deep stack events since these are the best practice for World Series tournaments. 

If you do happen to win a WSOP seat through a satellite, or you just decide to buy directly into an event, you need to be prepared. After all, what’s the point of preparing yourself on the table if you’re going to blow it when it comes to booking a hotel and getting to the casino on time? So always make sure to book your hotel as soon as possible, and you should also consider arriving in Las Vegas the night before the event to guarantee that you’ll make your tournament on time.