Bodog Beat

Caesars Palace has announced the Mega Stack Series as their addition to the summer Las Vegas poker tournament schedule. (Image from WikiMedia)

Announcer: Who needs just a "deep stack" when you can have a "MEGA STACK"!?!?!?!?

Can you not just hear it, kind of like a used car commercial?

Anyway, Caesars Palace has decided to up the ante on the WSOP-peripheral poker tournaments in Las Vegas this summer by going "MEGA."

The new Caesars Palace Mega Stack Series will run from June 1 to July 9 and will feature 43 events over that time frame, culminating in a three-day $1,000 + 60 buy-in. Buy-ins for the preliminary events start at $225 with stacks of at least 5,000 chips and 50-minute levels. Of course, the stacks get more mega-ier as the buy-ins increase.

The series joins an already crowded poker tournament schedule in June and July. Not only do you have the 2008 WSOP running from May 30 to July 18 (these dates are seared into our brains), but there will also be the WPT Bellagio Cup IV, the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza, the second-annual Binion's Poker Classic, The Grand Poker Series at the Golden Nugget and the 2008 Orleans Open Poker Tournament (OK, that one's not as major). With so much going on, you've got to wonder which tournament will suffer from a lack of entrants (*cough* Orleans *cough*).

Either way, you can get to Vegas this summer as part of Team Bodog and play in the biggest tournament on that list, which is also the richest tournament in the world, the 2008 WSOP Main Event. Online qualifiers for a $12,000 WSOP prize package are going on daily in the Bodog Poker room for as little as $1, so make sure to head over and check out the WSOP online poker qualifiers.

Charles Simmons is a regular writer of poker news for the Beat and is really hoping that the media room at the WSOP this year is not sub-zero.