The World Poker Tour (WPT) is a collection of poker tournaments featuring most of the world’s professional players. It was started by attorney/television producer Stephen Lipscomb who now serves as CEO of WPT Enterprises (WPTE), the firm that controls the World Poker Tour.
The tour had its debut season in the latter part of 2002 and early part of 2003, climaxing with the WPT Championship in April 2003 at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first season aired on the Travel Channel on American cable television in the spring of 2003. The show made its network debut on February 1, 2004 on NBC with a special “Battle Of Champions” tournament, which aired against CBS coverage of the Super Bowl XXXVIII pre-game show.
The World Poker Tour is a collection of Texas hold ‘em poker tournaments held internationally and on board cruise ships, but mainly in the United States. The television show has led to a boom in the table game across American homes, local casinos and poker rooms, and online. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the key sponsors of the tour are casinos and online poker sites. The show, which is syndicated internationally, is co-hosted by World Series of Poker winner Mike Sexton, and actor Vince Van Patten. Former model Shana Hiatt served as the show host and sideline reporter in its first three seasons. Former newscaster Courtney Friel took over the host role for the fourth season in 2005-06.
First exemplified by the long-running World Series of Poker main event, a poker tournament gives each player an equal amount of chips to start, with colors representing different values. Play continues, typically over several days until one player has acquired all of the chips. When that occurs, that player has won the game and captures the grand prize, approximately 30-35% of the total prize pool. The resulting winner’s check can exceed one million dollars. All other competitors finish with no chips, but win a portion of the prize pool according to the order in which they left the tournament. The last player to lose all of his chip-stack finishes in 2nd position, typically worth approximately 20% of the prize pool.
The drawing power of the WPT, like any poker tournament, is that anyone who can pay the “buy-in” (an entry fee usually worth a few thousand dollars) or win a “satellite” tournament is able to compete against the top professional players, such as Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, or the top 2004 tournament money and multi-WPT tournament winner, Daniel Negreanu.
Fans of the show find it interesting due to technical innovations such as the ability to see the players’ hole cards through a small camera in front of them on the poker table (an innovation first seen on the UK programme Late Night Poker). Due to the success of the show, special programs, such as the “Hollywood Home Game”, featuring celebrities playing for charity, and “Ladies Night”, where six of the top women played against each other, were developed.
In 2004 the World Poker Tour created a Walk of Fame, inducting poker legends Doyle Brunson and Gus Hansen as well as actor James Garner.
Now in its fourth season of broadcast, it still remains among the highest rated television programs on cable. It airs Wednesdays on the Travel Channel. The first three seasons of WPT are also available on NTSC DVD. (The second season DVD set features audio commentary by several of the players. The third season is only available in a “Best Of” format, featuring just half of the episodes.)
A series of spin-off tournaments, titled the Professional Poker Tour, began filming in 2004. No episodes have as yet been broadcast, partly due to a dispute with the Travel Channel over rights. In the fall of 2005, WPTE announced that “a cable channel” (believed to be ESPN) had withdrawn from bidding for the PPT series, and that WPTE was negotiating with the Travel Channel to air the series.
In 2008, the WPT started offering bracelets to its event champions. Players who won a title prior to the release of the bracelet, were given one retroactively.
Player of the Year
Points are awarded for all Open events as follows:
Winner: 1000 points
Runner-up: 700 points
3rd place: 600 points
4th place: 500 points
5th place: 400 points
6th place: 300 points
7th place (TV bubble): 200 points
This award is given out to one player per season.
This award is given out to one player per season. The winners so far are:
Season 1: Howard Lederer
Season 2: Erick Lindgren
Season 3: Daniel Negreanu
Season 4: Gavin Smith
Season 5: J. C. Tran
Season 6: Jonathan Little
Season 7: Bertrand Grospellier
Below are the World Poker Tour events that have broken the record for the first prize.
The World Series of Poker is the most prestigious set of poker tournaments in the world.
Origins
The original World Series of Poker was started by Tom Morehead of the Riverside casino in Reno and was an invitational event. The set of tournaments the World Series of Poker (WSOP) would evolve to was the brainchild of Las Vegas legend, casino owner, and poker player Benny Binion as well as his two sons Jack and Ted.
Johnny Moss, Becky Binion, and Puggy Pearson at the 1974 World Series of Poker
The Binion family not only nurtured the WSOP, but poker in general. Prior to the 1970s, poker was not found at many casinos because of the difficulty of keeping cheaters out. Through better security techniques as well as the Binion’s tireless promotion through events like the WSOP, poker became a very popular game.
In 1970 the first WSOP at Binion’s Horseshoe took place with seven players. The winner, Johnny Moss was elected by his peers as the first World Champion of Poker and received a silver cup as a prize.
A chip race is an event that takes place in poker tournaments, especially those with an escalating blinds (such as Texas hold ‘em), in which chips of denominations that are no longer needed (as the current and upcoming blinds are more easily played with larger chip values) are removed from play. This has the effect of reducing the number of physical chips in front of any player, and makes it easier for the players to count their stacks and their bets.
In a typical chip race:
All players color up their lesser-valued chips into greater denominations. For example, if the blinds have increased to a level where $5 chips are no longer needed to post blinds, each five $5 chips will be exchanged for a $25 chip. Players will temporarily keep any leftover chips that cannot be fully colored up to larger chips (less than 5 $5 chips in the above example).
All leftover chips are counted, and equivalent chips in the larger denomination are presented to the table. Continuing the example, if there are 15 $5 chips remaining among 6 players, 3 $25 chips are prepared. In the event the remaining smaller chips do not add up to a whole larger chip, an extra larger chip should be added as long as the leftover smaller chips total more than half a single larger chip.
Each player with leftover chips in the smaller denomination will receive one card for each chip. The cards are typically dealt face up, starting from the small blind position for the upcoming hand. Each player due to receive cards will receive all of his cards before the next player, rather than a “traditional” card deal; the player on the little blind, for example, who is due to receive three cards for his three chips, will receive all three of his cards before the big blind receives any.
The larger chips are issued to the players with the highest single cards showing (poker hands do not count). No player is issued more than one chip. Ties (cards of the same rank) are broken by suit, using the same bridge (ascending alphabetical) order of the suits: Spades are highest, followed by Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs. All remaining lesser-value chips are removed from play.
A chip race cannot eliminate a player from the game. In the event a player’s last smaller-denomination chips are removed from play as part of the chip race, he automatically gets one colored up chip if one is available. Any leftover colored up chips go to the winner(s) of the chip race as described above.
Poker freerolls are poker tournaments that do not require a money buy-in. Commonly called “freerolls” and “freerollz”, they when invented in the early 1960′s when Las Vegas Casinos used them to reward VIPs by offering them a free poker tournament with real money prizes. Poker freerolls have surged in popularity recently with several online poker rooms regularly offering them to attract new players to the site, or to reward existing players’ loyalty. Some online poker freerolls have a raked hands requirement to enter, meaning they are not entirely free. While most poker freerolls have real money prizes, some freerolls will offer other prizes such as trips, clothing, and gift certificates instead.
As the number of freerolls offered by various online casinos grows, the potential to profit solely by playing freerolls has become a reality. Some websites provide players with freeroll schedules, and some players are turning a significant profit just by hopping from site to site to play freerolls.
In a typical tournament, a player pays a fixed entry fee (called a buy-in) and receives, in return, a certain quantity of in-game currency, called play money, invariably represented in the form of poker chips. Typically, the amount of play money given each player is an integer multiple of the buy-in. Only this in-game “play” money can be used in the game, real money cannot. Additionally, real and play money cannot be interchanged at any time. Some tournaments, however, offer the option of a re-buy; this gives players the option of purchasing more chips. In some cases, re-buys are conditional (for example, offered only to players low on chips) but in others they are unconditional, or offered to all players. When a player has no chips remaining (and has exhausted all re-buy options, if any are available) he or she is eliminated from the tournament.
In most tournaments, the number of players at each table is kept even by moving players, either by switching one player or (as the field shrinks) taking an entire table out of play and distributing its players amongst the remaining tables. A few tournaments, called shoot-outs, do not do this; instead, the last player (sometimes the last two or more players) at a table moves on to a second or third round, akin to a single-elimination tournament found in other games.
The prizes for winning are usually derived from the entry fees, though outside funds may be entered as well. For example, some invitational tournaments do not have entry fees. (These tournaments are referred to as freeroll.) Play continues, in most tournaments, until all but one player is eliminated, though in some tournament situations, especially informal ones, players have the option of ending by consensus.
Players are ranked in reverse chronological order — the last person in the game earns 1st place, the second-to-last earns 2nd, and so on. This ranking of players by elimination is unique amongst games, and also precludes the possibility of a tie for first place, since one player alone must have all the chips to end the tournament. (Ties are possible for all other places, though they are rare since the sole tiebreaker is the number of chips one has at the start of the hand in which one is eliminated.)
Sometimes tournaments end by mutual consensus of the remaining players. For example, in a ten-person, $5 game, there may be two players remaining with $29 and $21, respectively, worth of chips. Rather than risk losing their winning, as one of them would if the game were continued, these two players may be allowed to split the prize proportional to their in-game currency (or however they agree).
Prizes are awarded to the winning players in one of three ways:
Fixed: Each placing corresponds to a certain payoff. For example, a ten-person, $20 buy-in tournament might award $100 to the first-place player, $60 for second-place, $40 for third, and nothing for lower places.
Proportional: Payouts are determined according to a percentage-based scale. The percentages are determined based upon the number of participants and will increase payout positions as participation increases. As a rule, roughly one player in ten will ‘cash’, or make a high enough place to earn money. These scales are very top-heavy, with the top three players usually winning more than the rest of the paid players combined.
Tournaments can be open or invitational. The World Series of Poker, whose final event (no limit Texas Hold ‘Em) is considered the most prestigious of all poker tournaments, is open.
Satellite tournaments to high-profile, expensive poker tournaments are the means of entering a major event without posting a signifcant sum of cash. These have significantly smaller buy-ins, usually on the order of one-tenth to one-fiftieth the main tournament’s buy-in. Top players in this event, in lieu of a cash prize, are awarded seats to the main tourney, with the number of places dependent on participation. Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 World Series of Poker, was able to afford his seat at this event by winning an Internet tournament with a $40 buy-in. Greg Raymer, 2004 World Series of Poker champion, acquired his seat via a $165 Internet tournament.
Johnny Moss, Becky Binion, and Puggy Pearson at the 1974 World Series of Poker
