Sun Poker 100 WSOP Seat Giveaway

Sun Poker has taken a new twist with their One Sick Promo idea. They are going to send 100 people to the World Series of Poker. That's not ground-breaking. It's the manner in which they're doing it that is something new.

Instead of running a series of tournaments, with satellites and qualifiers leading up to a Main Event, they're giving the seats away. That's right, no need to win anything. No random drawing, no freeroll tournament, no heads up poker showdown.

The seats go to the players that gather up the most comp points at the room between the first of December and the 31st of May 2007. That's a long stretch of time, so not having started right at the whistle is a handicap players can overcome.

What I like about this promo is that instead of making the players cover the cost of the seats through tournament fees, or even putting up the seats as a freeroll prize, they are simply taking - get this - over one million dollars and dividing it up between the 100 players that spend the most time at the tables.

That is a fantastic continuing player reward. While players are all going to the same place, there are different prize levels set up. For instance, the top 5 players don't just go to Vegas. They go there by taking a flight on a private jet. That's a notch above.

The leaderboard is divided into several different sections, with different sets of rewards for each section. So, the higher you are on the leaderboard, the more that Sun Poker will spend on you.

One place you can see this is in the accomodations. Finish at the top, and you'll stay in a mansion for several weeks. Finish in the middle of the pack, and you'll have to settle for a four or five star hotel.

There is a freeroll event that's tied into this promotion. Sun Poker will be extending invitations to a free tournament where the top prize will be a $50,000 seat in the WSOP H.O.R.S.E. event. To qualify for the invitation you'll need to rack up 50,000 comp points during the promo.

The HORSE tourney is the highest buy-in event, at the most prestigious poker event of the year, so that's a really sweet prize.

This "ONe Sick Promo" is not the kind of event where a player can sign up, get a rush of cards, maybe play well, or perhaps catch an angel card or two and rise to the top. Instead, it's a matter of the room saying to their players "All right, we know some of you play a lot of poker. We'd like to say thanks by sending 100 of you to the WSOP, in style".

That's a sincere way to reward the players at the room, I think. So, if you're a grinder, this promo is aimed at you. You don't have to work your way through a tournament field of thousands, just do what you usually do. Play poker. And at Sun Poker, the rewards can be great.