Just one year ago, Fernando Pons turned a satellite win into a trip to the WSOP Main Event final table.

You can taste it. You can smell it. You’ve made it to Step 5 of the 888poker World Series of Poker Main Event satellites series and are ready to earn your Main Event seat. If the dream didn’t seem real before now, it certainly is now. Last year, 2016 November Niner Fernando Pons started his Main Event satellite journey at this exact step and ended up turning $30 into $1,000,000.

The dream achieved by Pons is what player envisions when they first enter an 888poker satellite and the Spaniard was able to turn his first trip into the United States into the dream of a lifetime.


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ESPN commentator and 888poker team pro Kara Scott has interviewed dozens of players in the Main Event in previous years but Pons’s experience in playing on the world’s biggest stage stood out to her.

“Hearing [Pons] talk about how he used poker tournaments to unwind after work at night at his house in Spain, and how he mistakenly entered an online satellite one evening to win a package to the WSOP without really even dreaming about being at the WSOP,” said Scott “To go from sitting on his sofa playing a €30 tournament to finding himself in Vegas for the very first time, to be running super deep in the most exciting event of the year. So good. I loved that story. He came across like a really sweet guy.”

Many 888poker team pros are expected to start their Main Event qualification journey at this step with Bruno Kawauti, Nicolau Villa-Lobos and Natalie Hof among them.

To get the fifth step requires a lot of time and energy to be invested in order to reach the cusp of the Main Event seat. At the same time, should a player not qualify for the next step, it is very easy to go through an emotional downswing at having to start at the first step. This is a fact not lost on Parker ‘tonkaaaa’ Talbot who encourages players to keep their mind in a positive place and wants them to know they have a lot of time to climb back up the mountain.

“Don’t get down on yourself. You can work your way up to $30 numerous times, you can make it back. There’s lots of time to play. If you were to study and work hard, no field is too tough.”

The next Fernando Pons is out there among you and 888poker is the only place to qualify for as little as $.01. The final piece of the satellite puzzle will cover the $160 step, where another November Niner was able to qualify and turn a minimal investment into over $1,000,000.