Every Sunday evening, Europe’s poker elite huddle in front of their lambent laptop screens and settle in for the bwin Champion Chip tournament. This is bwin’s marquee event, which is no surprise considering the $250,000 guarantee it carries. Anyone with the funds can buy directly into the event, but there are plenty of ways to win your way there.

Qualifiers run either as Sit and Go’s or Scheduled Tournaments. As you would expect, the S&G tournaments start as soon as they are full and award one ticket each. All of these events sport low stakes buy-ins, starting with a $10 + $1, 20 player tournament. The $20 + $2 event provides a 10 player single-table option, while the 10 place $30 + $3 tournament offers the same experience with a little more reward.

On the scheduled tournament side of things, there are multiple chances every week to win your way into the Champion Chip final. Right at the bottom of the scale are the $1 + $0.20 and $2 + $0.25 events. Satellites at such a low price-point means that absolutely everyone is in with a chance of taking down the Champion Chip title. In fact, none of the buy-ins should be very far out of reach. Tournaments priced at $10 + $1, 20 + $2, and $30 + $3, round out the selection of daily Champion Chip qualifier tournaments.

If you’ve been trying all week to get your ticket, or just fancy taking a last minute shot at glory, then bwin has the tournament for you. Every Sunday, shortly before the Champion Chip is set to start, they run a $5 + $0.50 Last Chance qualifier. This scheduled event is the very final satellite event every week. But even if you don’t manage to pick up a ticket, the whole satellite schedule begins again in earnest the very next day.

The Champion Chip Final is a $190 + $10 No Limit Hold ‘em event. It’s most attractive feature is a $250,000 guaranteed prize pool. The event typically attracts around 1,500 players, and usually breaks its guarantee by tens of thousands. The Champion Chip is a particularly attractive proposition on quieter weekends as, unlike some of the larger weekly tournaments, it doesn’t always break its guarantee. Nevertheless, the prize pool is usually somewhere in the region of $300,000. That means that the first place finisher typically receives between $45,000 and $60,000.