Las Vegas Review-Journal – A long-anticipated pay-to-play poker website based on the World Series of Poker will launch Thursday morning for customers located in the Nevada.
Officials from Caesars Interactive Entertainment, a subsidiary of Caesars Entertainment Corp., said Monday they received final approval from Nevada gaming regulators to begin accepting wagers on WSOP.com. Gibraltar-based 888 Holdings is providing the technology platform for the website.
WSOP.com will join Ultimate Poker, which is majority-owned by Station Casinos, as the only two regulated, real money gaming websites currently operating in the U.S. Several other poker websites are also expected to launch in Nevada while New Jersey hopes to move forward with online gaming websites by the end of November. Ultimate Poker began operating at the end of April.
WSOP.com will launch at 9:19 a.m. and can only be used by gamblers playing a computer located within Nevada’s borders.
“We expect to be competitive because we know what players want,” Caesars Interactive CEO Mitch Garber said during a media conference call Monday. “We’ve been talking with players and we listened to what they said that they want to see in the online game.”
The WSOP website will offer real money wagering on several variations of poker, including Texas Hold’em, Omaha and stud. WSOP.com will also initiate various marketing programs and player incentives during the the first phases of operation, including buy-ins as low as 1-cent and 2-cents and tournaments that have a $1.10 entry fee.
During the first few months, WSOP.com will operate under a “field trial,” in which all facets of the operation are monitored by Caesars Interactive and Nevada gaming regulators. The website will be fully functional to the public during the field trial.
Garber said WSOP.com will offer customers its own players loyalty program in which points can be used for various incentives, such as rooms, shows and other entertainment offerings at the company’s 10 Strip resorts. Also, Caesars Entertainment’s Total Rewards customer loyalty program to promote WSOP.com to its 44 million members.
“We will bridge land-based and online gaming in ways that have never been seen before,” Garber said.
