Online poker provides poker players with hours of gambling entertainment. However, online poker does not have to stop there. Before online poker exploded onto the scene about a decade ago, there was only land based poker. Land based poker tournaments were the be-all and end-all of the poker world where the top players would gather and battle it out for supremacy.

However, even though online poker may have taken a huge chunk of the market away from land based poker tables, nothing much has changed with regards to the prestige of land tournaments. The good news is that online play provides players with a stepping stone to the big land tournaments – tournaments that would otherwise be very difficult to gain entry to.

There are many online poker rooms which offer players the chance to enter smaller online tournaments, and with that the chance to gain entry into land tournaments. Online poker rooms do not only offer seats at land tournaments. In fact, players who win their way through find that they also receive full buy-in, accommodation and spending money.

There are many online poker rooms that offer players the opportunity to winning their way into land tournaments. However, players should only play at the more reputable online poker rooms. Although these offers seem amazing at first, it is the bigger poker rooms that have the resources to be able to offer the better tournaments.

The bigger online poker networks also have many top poker professionals affiliated to them and this is where these poker pros play their online poker. Some tournaments require players to knock out these pros in order to qualify for a land tournament. Online poker can be quite stressful, but this stress is nowhere near as high as the stress experienced by a player at a large land tournament that is being televised to millions of viewers. Playing online tournaments against a real poker pro is a great way to train for the real thing when a player may have to face the pro in the flesh.

Online poker networks offer their members many different ways to gain entry into land tournaments. The most popular way is to play the many satellite tournaments on offer. These tournaments take place quite often and players need to sign up for a poker network in order to play these games.

One of the best places to play online poker is PKR.com as this poker network is not only one of the biggest, but also one of the fastest growing. PKR.com offers its members lucky draws into tournaments as well as allowing members to trade comp points for entry into satellite tournaments and sit-and-go tournaments.

Players should look online to see which poker networks are offering the best chances to gain access to land tournaments. Even if the tournament on offer is not WSOP, any entry into a land tournament through online play is an experience of a lifetime as well as a huge ego boost for any poker player.