Organizers of this year’s World Series of Poker has announced the return of their popular Tournament of Champions (TOC) event, a televised No-Limit Hold ‘em tournament which rewards some of the Series’ top players with a chance at a first prize worth $500,000; but this year in an interesting twist, they’re letting the fans choose who those top players should be.

Free voting for the 20 players- out of 27 total- to be decided by the fans, began a little more than one week ago and already over 140,000 people have gone to www.wsop.com to pick their favorites- as they're allowed to vote for any player with at least one WSOP bracelet to their credit. 

A constantly updating list of the top 50 vote getters can also be found at that site, with many familiar names- and one or two that perhaps aren’t though probably should be- already racking up big numbers.  Some of the current leaders and likely choices include Doyle Brunson, Scotty Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth and PokerRoad’s Barry Greenstein.

Given those players well known and impressive lists of accomplishments you’d think they would already be invited  to such an event but organizers only have official invites for five players thus far: the three past TOC champions Annie Duke, Mike Matusow and Mike Sexton; the reigning WSOP Main Event champion, Joe Cada; and Barry Shulman, the 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event champion.

Voting for the TOC will remain open until midnight June 15th but obviously most people aren’t waiting, not only casting their own votes but flooding to the different forums and social networking sites, to debate the warrants of each particular possibility.

To get in on the fun, visit www.wsop.com and cast a vote.