Updated Mon, 2008-01-14 08:17
Every top poker room has its weekly guaranteed tournament featuring some pretty over the top prizes. Exactly how much they hand out, apparently depends on the size of the poker room in question. Party Poker is definitely one of the biggest poker rooms, so their weekly guarantee features no less than $300,000 in guaranteed prizes. The direct buy-in for the tourney is $215 which is a lot for a player who is not at all confident in his/her abilities, to invest. Therefore, there are a series of other ways to win a seat at the 300K: a whole bunch of MTT qualifiers as well as some STT ones.MTT qualifiers are scheduled tournaments, some of which run daily. There are 6 daily $3 qualifiers which grant players 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9 seats in the Weekend $300K depending on exactly which of them one participates (the Party Poker tournament lobby always has detailed information on the number of seats granted by each qualifier, so make sure you check that before you commit). There are two $11 daily MTT qualifiers which offer participants 7 and 16 seats respectively. There is only one $23 daily, which features 9 guaranteed seats. The weekend MTT qualifiers are available for $11, $12 or $23 and they take place either on Saturdays or on Sundays. Worry not if you qualify after the registration for the 300K has already closed. You’ll play in the following week’s $300K guaranteed. STT qualifiers cost $26, $66 or $120 to enter and they run around the clock, starting whenever tables fill up. All of these STTs guarantee at least 2 seats, but the $26 ones feature 10 guaranteed seats.A couple of feeder sub-qualifiers are also running in STT format. These cost $3 to enter, and they provide 10 seats to the $26 qualifiers.
Since there are so many ways one can qualify, and because some people do attempt to qualify through several different threads at the same time, you may want to know that if you do manage to earn two seats in the $300K, the second one won’t be paid out to you. You cannot transfer or sell your hard-won seat either.