As you probably know, the Pokerstars Word Championship of Online Poker happens this September and satellites are in full swing right now. WCOOP offers humungous guarantees and is one of the biggest events in online poker.
To make the story short, I managed to qualify for Event No. 6 which is a $530 buy-in, $3M guaranteed tournament thru the Steps qualifiers.
If you're not aware, Steps are basically like playing a normal SNG. Placing in the top two usually geta you a ticket for Step 2. Then you play a Step 2 SNG and if you place in that, then you get Step 3 and so on.
For me, its better than playing a large qualifying tournament for 2 reasons. One, I believe I have the necessary expertise in SNGs to at least compete and have a fair chance of winning. Two, it is perfect for the limited time I have. I can just play a step 1 SNG now, then play step 2 tomorrow or even a week from now. I am not forced to sit for 5 hours straight or wake up in an ungodly hour just to play a qualifier.
Anyway, last night I won one of the Step 4 SNGs and in return I get the $530 ticket for Event 6. I was quite happy since my investment was less than $40. Until I checked the schedule and saw that it will start at 3AM and was a 2 day tournament. It also coincided with a trip to India that I had to go to.
I know that $3M is a great guarantee and hope springs eternal blah blah. But I am quite realistic and I know that my chances in a field of 5,000+ players is quite slim.
So it was an easy decision to make. I unregistered for the tournament and I got 530 W$ in return. This is the first time I got W$ in pokerstars and I googled what I could do with it. Well, it seems that I can use this just like real money and spend it on tournament entry fees. But it was only allowed for special event tourneys like the WCOOP and other similar events. I couldn't use it for a normal $12 tournament or even SNGs. It seems that T$ are better since these could be used for almost any tourney.
So I googled some more and found that there are sites that allowed you to sell these W$ for real money less a certain processing fee. So I clicked on the first site which offered me $482 real dollar in exchange for my 530W$. I arranged the transaction over at Pokerstars and that was it. My pokerstars account was richer by $482.
In hindsight, I actually made a mistake. It seems that there are a lot of sites which offer this exchange service and just like banks, they gave different rates. Its a good thing that the first site I clicked actually offered the best rate when I canvassed the other sites. So all's well that ends well.
Right now, I will most probably try the steps again and see if I can get another ticket. Heheh .... Maybe this time I might be tempted to play it.
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