What the #$%&!@ is Zosoz?

Zosoz?

Yep, Zosoz!

That, believe it or not, is the name of the latest so-called "legal" online poker room to grace the Internet.

Located at www.zosoz.com, the room maintains that, technically speaking, it doesn't offer gambling, so therefore it's legal in places where online gambling isn't.

What's the loophole?

Unlike traditional online poker rooms, such as Poker Stars (www.pokerstars.com) or Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.com), where players pay money to buy in to a tournament, at Zosoz, players pay a monthly membership fee of $20 to join the site and then can play in free tourneys that offer cash prizes.

The idea is not new.

Several other online poker rooms, including Triple Jack (www.triplejack.com) and Pure Play (www.pureplay.com), use similar schemes to avoid legal issues, though those loopholes have never been tested in court.

Despite having competitors with similar operations, Tim Belisle, the head of Zosoz, claims his site is-what else?-the best.

"What makes Zosoz different from other online poker clubs is that we give away the most online poker tournament sweepstakes prizes annually: daily $1,000 tournaments, weekly $10,000 tournaments, monthly $100,000 tournaments and a yearly $1 million tournament," he said in a news release.

He continued: "Zosoz also contains forums and chat rooms to learn how to play for novices and to learn how to fine-tune one's game for experienced players. Zosoz players have a great time participating in tournaments for huge prizes, without being required to risk any hard-earned cash."

Nowhere in the release does Belisle or anyone else explain the bizarre moniker Zosoz-what it means or why it was chosen as the name of an online poker room.

No explanations are given at the Zosoz website either.

Zosoz is based in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, USA.

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Thomas Somach, www.pokerhelper.com