The prospect of playing a World Series of Poker bracelet event is different for every player. For professional poker players, the forthcoming GGPoker and WSOP.com hosted series provides a chance to earn more money in MTTs than would usually be possible, with swelled player fields and big guaranteed prizepools.

For the regular player who turns a profit at the game, some of the events represent a chance to up the stakes and take a shot at a bigger top prize than would usually be possible. There will be a huge number of player who take on the events that are recreationals, however, and they’ll be hoping to do so by travelling on the Silk Road.

What’s the Silk Road? Well, it’s a satellite path where you can enter World Series events for as little as $2. We’ve come a long way from Chris Moneymaker, haven’t we? With millions of online poker players reveling in the ability to play in multiple series events in the last few months, the lack of live poker tournaments – in particular the Las Vegas-based WSOP itself – has been tough to take. These sorts of promotions make up for a lot of the value lost, however.

There are no steps or satellites, with each event leading to a direct ticket, which means that for many events, only a handful – or fingerful – of tickets will be available. You’ll need to perfect that short-handed game in order to do well, then, and in that sense, these events play a little more like a freeroll with one or two big prizes than satellite events with 20-30 tickets on offer in every single game.