When Seth Palansky gets questions about Caesars Interactive rolling out WSOP online poker in Nevada, he inevitably mentions patience. That’s the virtue the company cited when Station Casinos rolled out its Ultimate Poker website last month, becoming the first fully legal real-money gambling program to launch in the United States.

“But being first didn’t matter…”, said a spokesman for Caesars Interactive. “There’s got to be a little patience,”.

Caesars is now preparing to launch a fully functional WSOP.com during the 44th annual World Series of Poker to perhaps become the second website in Nevada to offer real-money poker tables. And if all goes as planned, WSOP.com will go live before the Main Event on July 6, allowing players to compete in a 10-day online tournament via satellite.

Nevada gaming regulators in 2011 approved a partnership between Caesars Entertainment Corp. and 888 Holdings PLC, a Gibraltar-based company that runs online casinos in the United Kingdom. It was the first such approval in the history of online gaming in Nevada and one that paved the way for a deal allowing Caesars and 888 to launch gambling websites using Caesars’ famed WSOP brand.

But the seeds of the relationship were sown much earlier. “The history goes back a few years ago,” said Itai Frieberger, chief operating officer of 888 Holdings. In late 2009 — when Caesars was known as Harrah’s — the domestic casino giant wanted badly to enter the United Kingdom with its WSOP lineup. Caesars found a conduit into the market when it inked a multimillion-dollar deal with Dragonfish, an 888 Holdings company.

888 Holdings caught Caesars’ attention in 2006, when the offshore company pulled out of the United States market, which at the time generated more than $15 billion in revenue. Read more about the WSOP online at Vegas Inc.