It seems that every year, the number of players in each live event keeps on growing, and none more so than at the World Series of Poker, where thousands of players throw their money into the mix to try and get their little slice of poker history. You can play all the live tournaments you want to gain valuable experience, but where can you get the quickest training in negotiating these huge field tournaments?

The best place happens to be online.

Playing online tournaments, especially the big Sunday tournaments, is your best training tool for getting ready to tackle such overwhelming fields. Sure, there are live events across the country daily, but none of them have the number of players to come close to a World Series of Poker event. So, if you want to be ready to play in the World Series of Poker, get online and get your game strategy worked on before you head to Vegas to play.

You can play tournaments from freerolls to larger buy in tournaments online almost every day. Don't dismiss a 5,000-person freeroll event as a waste of time, because the reality is, with the number of players that will play this years' WSOP, you will run into every type and style of player imaginable. You have to learn how to dodge as many landmines as you possibly can to survive and flourish in a WSOP tournament. Playing in these large field events online, whether it's a buy in or a freeroll, can give you this valuable experience, and teach you how to pick good spots to get your money into pots. Hopefully, with some luck, you will be able to get yourself chipped up and, in doing so, give yourself added flexibility in the way you can approach your tournament.

Sure, in bigger-buy in online tournaments, like many of the big Sunday events at various online sites, the quality of play will be much higher than in the freeroll events. The problem for many players, though, is forking out the $200 to $500 buyins each Sunday. This is a good opportunity to refer to my article in last month's Bluff Magazine, in which I talk about playing the sit-n-gos/single-table satellites at the WSOP for both cheap entry into bigger tournaments and for the extra earning potential they offer. Likewise, you can use the sit-n-gos online to satellite into the big Sunday tournaments. And not only will you gain valuable experience as you maneuver through the big fields, you also can get a shot at taking home up to a quarter of a million dollars.

In these big field tournaments, whether it's online or the WSOP Main Event, you will have to come up with a reasonable strategy to survive and prosper. You can't win the WSOP Main Event on the first day of play, nor can you win an online tournament within the first few hours. Therefore, you need a good plan of attack. Again, the only place you can practice this sort of tournament regularly is online. By playing as many large-field tournaments online as you can before you set foot in the RIO, the betterprepared you will be to survive the marathon of poker you will face. Even the smaller buy-in tournaments at this year's WSOP are three day marathons, so it's obvious that the organizers are expecting huge turnouts. So make sure you tinker with your strategy online and find out what works for you. You have an opportunity that you normally don't get in live play. And you can play multiple tournaments a day online, whereas you can only reasonably play one live event a day.

So get online and give these tournaments a try. Not only could they give you one hell of a nice payday, but they will also sharpen your game.

Knock 'em dead, Jim "KrazyKanuck" Worth