The World Poker Tour

The World Poker Tour is relatively new but it is partially responsible for changing the landscape of poker.  By catering to both the seasoned poker vet and the poker newbie, the wildly successful WPT TV program helped bring poker into the mainstream.

Top World Poker Tour Qualifier Tournaments

The World Poker Tour is a series of poker tournaments that are held across the nation and across the world.  The culmination of these events is the WPT Championship, a $25,000 buy in tournament played at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas.  The 2004 WPT Championship had the largest first place prize ever given for a poker tournament up to that date - $2.7 million.  The first place prize for the 2007 was an even more impressive $3.9 million.

The Pocket Cam

The producers introduced a simple twist to televised poker that made all the different in the world.  To get audiences more involved, they inserted hole cams at each table that showed each player’s hole cards as they played their hands.  This was the first time anything of the sort had been tried and it was a huge success.  Showing the hole cards and accompanying commentary put the viewers in the place of the players.

Poker veterans and newbies alike found it fascinating to watch high stakes poker from the eyes of the players.  They could watch from the comfort of home as the players made tough decisions for millions of dollars.  The commentators made it easy for poker newbies to follow along and the formula proved to be a major success.

With its ability to bring in both the seasoned fans and those new to poker, the WPT brought poker to new levels of popularity.  Before hole cams were used, viewers never got to see all the action that was going on at the table – it just looked like a bunch of bored guys playing cards.

The WPT on TV

On March 30th of 2003 the World Poker Tour made its TV debut.  It was shown on the Travel Channel.  Previously, prime time hours on the Travel Channel attracted about 350,000 household viewers but the WPT attracted 1.2 million households per episode.

Now in its sixth season, the World Poker Tour can be seen on the Game Show Network on Sunday and Monday nights.  New hostess Layla Kayleigh will join Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten in commentating for the weekly two hour episodes.

To date the WPT has awarded over $300 million in cash prizes, created over 80 millionaires and aired over 100 episodes.  This year’s WPT Championship event will be played at the Bellagio, Las Vegas on  April 19th.

WPT Satellites

If you don’t feel like shelling out the $25,000 entry fee, there are satellites available at PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker right now.  For as little as $24, you can work your way up through the events and win a seat at the World Poker Tour.  Who knows, maybe you can turn that $24 investment into a $4 million payday.