WPT: A Short history

World Poker Tour - A Short history

Imagine an alternate reality, a reality where you watch your favourite poker broadcast and stream. The player banter is sharp, the commentary is captivating, but... something is missing - the hole cards! You just see the players compete, but you can't see their plays, or their cards, and why should you? It took the top professionals years to get the proprietary information on how to smash the games, so why should they reveal it to wide audiences?.

Believe it or not, this was the stance of many poker pros when the Hrubieszów born Henry Orenstein's invention, the Hole Card Cam, was attempted to be first brought to the poker broadcasts.

World Poker Tour (WPT)
After initial attempts, It took nearly seven years for the true pioneers to arrive who would take full advantage of Henry's idea. They were led by the former Lawyer, Director and Producer Steven Lipscomb.

Steve came with a very simple vision. A vision that saw poker as a television spectacle, as a sports broadcast. A sport with play-by-play commentary with revealed hole cards, replays, with player profiles. Every frame would have a purpose, every poker show would turn into a 5 act Shakespearean play. It might seem strange to you, but back then this seemed like a crazy idea, but Steve would not be deterred. He is the kind of person who you could offer fifty dollars to make a show, and he would take them and make the best damn show there could be on that budget.

He got to work, started negotiating with the casinos, started writing and gathering production staff, and started pitching the show to various TV Channels and bosses. That was the hard part, however - poker wasn't seen as a sport ESPN would pick up on the spot back then. To bring an unproven brand with a somewhat popular card game on the air would be a risky move. Steven was determined however to make it work, and in the end, he convinced a very unlikely partner to help kickstart the poker boom - the Travel Channel who picked up the first show.

Steve knew it was not just about the production values and hole cards. He knew he needed on-screen talent that would draw in the audience, make the play-by-play exciting and give them a reason to come back for future shows. Enter a former gymnast and paratrooper Mike Sexton.

Mike was a poker player and one of the founders of Party Poker, even before it had a name and before the first virtual card was dealt on it, who experienced the crazy times of the poker boom, sleeping on the floor in the office where they all worked 24/7 to launch the software. He was knowledgeable, he was determined, he was memorable, and most of all, he was entertaining. He was the perfect man to be the public face of the new exciting TV show and was to join the former tennis player and actor Vincent Van Patten in the commentary booth.

At this point the WPT had the production staff, the commentators, and their format and were picked up to be on TV, the only thing that was missing was...

The players
The first WPT event - The 2002 Five Diamond World Poker Classic - was ready to make its players into stars. Hole cards were revealed. Everything they say mic'd up. Clips from their past. Chip tricks on display. Dramatic commentary by Mike and Vince hyping them up. Player profiles and interviews that made a big deal out of the personalities. Multiple camera angles, quick cuts and closeups. Luckily for the WPT, they had the talent to work with that would shine in the never-before-seen poker production values. Names like Gus Hansen, Scotty Nguyen, John Juanda or Freddy Deeb have become part of the very fabric that poker has become over the years, and they started the synergy between players and WPT that would last until this day. They were entertaining and memorable, they were the right faces the tour needed.

And so it went - history was made and the first World Poker Tour Show came to life on the Travel Channel.

Going International
Besides revealing hole cards in TV Broadcasts, WPT was part of another revolution - going international. Euro Finals of Poker in France, Costa Rica Classic or the Ultimate Poker Classic in Aruba - the audiences saw their game played under one brand, with familiar production values all over the world. This happened right off the bat, in the very first season! We cannot understate how vital was that first season for how we view poker today. It is common for brands to go international, for poker to be on TV and for poker players to make it to the mainstream media all around the world.

The first WPT season paved the way for the poker boom, soon Chris Moneymaker won his title, High Stakes Poker arrived, and more and more personalities were made, almost all of them taking part in the WPT itself, from Doyle Brunson to Tony G, showing their personalities to the masses on television to international audiences with serious production values.

The third revolution
The name of the game of poker in 2023, and one of the driving forces behind its growth is the synergy between Online and Live poker brands. Thousands and thousands of players win their live event seats and packages through online qualifiers. Almost every larger tournament is sponsored by or is directly tied to an online poker site, attempting to convert players who play in your local casino into giving the online variant a shot and vice versa. The true pioneers of this model were - you guessed it, the WPT. In 2009 the cooperation was so close they were acquired by PartyGaming, no doubt in large part due to Mike Sexton and his connections. Even though they would change owners six years later again, and today work with WPT Global primarily instead, the synergy between live and online poker has truly begun as we know it today.

The Apple of the Poker World
As happens with all brands in the corporate and entertainment world, they need to evolve. The first few seasons were instrumental for poker but were not profitable yet. Eventually, a new personality stepped in who would evolve WPT even further, who took the reigns over from Steve. In a trend that would continue to this day, that personality would come organically from within in the form of the at-first legal counsel Adam Pliska, who joined WPT in 2003 to rise to the position of General Counsel and CEO.

If you would expect any bitterness between him and the founder Steve you wouldn't find it. Adam always gives all the credit for founding and creating WPT to Adam, and Steve is grateful to Adam for taking his idea and making it better. As recently as a couple of years ago Adam confessed they were still very close and spoke almost every day.

The unlikely face of continuous success
Pliska didn't even really play poker, he was a lawyer and conventional TV producer who was asked by Steve to come help out with a few legal things for three weeks. He was an admitted shy man who travelled to a foreign country once at the age of twenty-three and then didn't leave until 29. This is the person who was meant to elevate THE poker brand known for pushing the envelope with stops all around the world? It turns out, yes, and if you watch any of his interviews you will see he is a person very grateful for where he is now. The way WPT runs is a paradox - despite capital ownership changes the management structure and staff are uncharacteristically stable ever since the beginning. The company works with a decentralised model, where Adam gives power to his "generals" with "heck of a lot of authority" in their regions, events and areas of operations, working as the "Apple of the poker world" with a startup mentality, where their staff are lead to try new ideas proactively. They have also had great relationships with the media, with Pliska admitting: "I mean, honestly, for the first six years of my existence with the World Poker Tour, I kept hearing, ‘When is this fad going to end?’ And if it wasn’t for the media, I think we’d still be hearing that.”

With this mentality, WPT kept evolving. Soon on-site reporters were added that interviewed the players, often unique for regional events in Europe with notable faces like Kara Scott. WPT made deals with the likes of Fox Sports and started online projects like ClubWPT where members can access all their shows and win tournament packages. They now work with WPT Global which brings many players to their tournaments through satellites. They even had to deal with a huge setback with the departure and passing of Mike Sexton and found a worthy successor in Tony Dunst who announces the main events with Vince Van Patten.

WPT has handed out over $1.25 Billion of Prize money since its inception. It's made over 300 Poker-made millionaires walk away from their tables. It's played on six continents. It is aired in 90 syndicated markets and networks across the world. It's one of the most aired shows in the world, and has made many stars out of poker players.

Players First
As we have seen in the past, the corporate world and poker ownership sometimes do not mix well. With bonuses tied to quarterly performance reports, it is easy for companies to squeeze the players to achieve short-term profitability, to play it safe at high prices. That is not the case for the WPT, Pliska is one of the longest-standing CEOs and in the long run, for him, keeping players is king. And how do you retain players? You make your brand exciting, you become storytellers who are about the community. And no bigger project in WPT history attempted just that than the:

Word Poker Championship Festival

The World Poker Championship in Vegas this December is the biggest WPT event in history and the culmination of the work of Steve, Adam and everyone else who worked on the brand over the years. WPT has decided to set up the biggest guarantee in live tournament history clocking in at $40,000,000. It is fully embracing the marriage of online and live poker, with up to 1,000 qualifiers expected to come from satellites and promotions. There has been a buzz around the satellites at WPT Global, my sources saying they were both popular and "soft" from an online grinder's perspective, there are even talks of an overlay in the event - we have come a long way from "us and them" mentality of online and live players, and The 2023 World Championship will be the culmination of that trend.

There are also smaller events - like the $600 $ 1 million guaranteed my friend already managed to bust in, or the $1000 Prime Championship with $ 5 million guaranteed. One of the biggest scores and wins for the WPT has got to be the Big One for One Drop taking place during this year's festival after a long break.

The future
A lot is riding on the success of the World Championship for WPT. Having a massive and record-breaking guarantee could lead to potential overlays. The event also competes with two other overlapping live events and will show if WPT can come out on top as the dominant live series brand. Adam Pliska didn't want to reveal much about their 2024 plans to Barry Carter, but after getting familiar with their structure, history, and how they run things, there is no doubt in my mind that the brand will continue be the cornerstone of the poker community. The main reason naturally being that for the first time in history, they will have yours truly, Coach Lemon, attending and covering one of their events.

Come wish me luck and get a piece of my action.

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