The PokerStars World Cup of Poker Grand Final kicked off yesterday here at the PCA in the Bahamas. It’s a unique tournament that pits countries against each other in a variety of poker formats.

Fifty-four nations battled it out in an online tournament series for one of the nine team spots here at the live finale.

The USA, Canada, Finland, Norway, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Taiwan, and Chile survived the rigorous prelims and have teams of five representing them here at Atlantis.

They’re here to fight for a piece of the $290,000 prize pool that has a top prize of $100,000, all of which was put up by PokerStars. The event is also being filmed for television.

Two action packed days of preliminary play will determine the teams’ stack sizes for the final table. Score is kept using a point-based system. The more points a team accumulates, the more chips they’ll get for their final table stack.

The first day, all team members will play shootouts which include 9 handed, six-max, and four-max sit and go style freezeouts.

The team that wins the most points on Day 1 will enjoy a day off and a free pass to a big stack at the final table. The eight other teams that aren’t so lucky will play heads-up battles on Day 2 where points will continue to be doled out.

The final table will be played tomorrow, January 12^th, and it features an interesting format of its own. We’ll see a tag-team style of play where each player must sit in for a full orbit while the team decides who is going go in next.

Sound interesting? That’s because it is. If you want to be a part of this event next year, there are a couple of ways to go about it.

Keep an eye out for the qualifier events that PokerStars will be running during the year. Go through the steps and survive the likely tens of thousands of people and you’re in.

If that sounds too difficult there is a simpler way. Just be one of the top two on the Tournament Leader Board for your country and you’ll automatically get a spot.

 Easy, eh?