By
Dan |
Published
Feb 20 2008, 09:39 PM
Recently, we published an article on PocketFives.com outlining the excitement surrounding the World Poker Tour’s debut on GSN, The Network for Games, on Monday, March 24. Just a few short days later, the WPT formally released its schedule for Season Seven of the poker phenomenon. Fourteen events comprise the seventh season and promise hair-raising action from some of the biggest stars in live and online poker. PocketFives.com sat down with
Steve Lipscomb, WPT’s Founder, President, and CEO, to discuss the events on the docket as well as analyze the play of several online poker players.
In Season Six, the WPT held 20 live events, which consisted of 18 tour stops and two special tournaments, WPT Ladies Night and the WPT Celebrity Invitational. This season, 14 affairs will air. Lipscomb comments, “I think the big change is that we’re focusing more on the big events that draw big numbers in order to turn them into cornerstones for the WPT. We had a positive dialogue with the poker community about what to do with the structure of our tournaments. What we’ve done is standardize the final table structure as much as we could. What that structure produced are longer final tables. So, part of what we’re doing is making longer episodes out of tournaments. Some of these are two-part episodes.”
Season Six’s broadcast will premier on GSN after previous installments had aired on The Travel Channel. Lipscomb is elated: “I can’t wait to be broadcast on a network that is as excited about poker as we are and not scared of the fact that it’s their biggest show. I think it’s great for us to be able to broadcast poker on a Monday night in prime time. We’ll be airing with a companion show, High Stakes Poker, and so I think GSN deserves a lot of credit for committing to finding a real home for the World Poker Tour.”
Season Six features some notable performances by PocketFivers, including Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul (pictured at right). Lipscomb talks about what you can expect to see from Saul on the upcoming airing of his hard-earned victory at the WPT Bellagio Cup: “Kevin plays with reckless abandon like no one I’ve ever seen before and that includes people like Gus Hansen. He never, ever relents. That’s part of what the internet style of play has brought to some of our events.”
Lipscomb also talked about the play of Scott “BigRiskky” Clements (pictured at left), who won the North American Poker Championship on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in Season Six and the Canadian Poker Championship in 2006. Both were WPT events: “If we just held events throughout Canada, he’d be pretty rich.”
The international expansion of the WPT is ongoing. Although Season Seven features just one tournament outside of the United States, Lipscomb notes that the company is constantly working to expand: “We had an event in France for a number of years that no one has been able to do there since for regulatory reasons. We’re also still looking at other tournaments like the Reno event in March and evaluating with the casino the possibility of going back. Internally, we’ve talked with casinos in Macau and Australia. What we’ve tried to focus on is developing high class events at high class casinos that everyone wants to play in: the Bellagio and the Borgata, for example.”
The Bellagio’s Festa Al Lago event is back in Season Seven after a one year hiatus, manifesting the WPT’s commitment to the big locations like Las Vegas. In fact, the Bellagio will play host to four tournaments in Season Seven. The Commerce Casino in Los Angeles will be the home of two more, meaning nearly half of the events will be filmed at one of those two venues.
With all of the recent changes in the legal landscape, the WPT has had to adjust. Lipscomb laments, “We’re the company that’s suffered most from playing by the rules. We would love for online poker players to have the kind of impact that they’ve had on the World Series of Poker, where two-thirds to three-quarters of their field consists of online poker players. What we’ve done is created strong land-based machines to drive people to our big events, so in that way we’re not as dependent on the internet.”
Get ready to shuffle up and deal. Mark your calendars for these dates, when the WPT will be headed on the road for Season Seven:
Bellagio Cup IV
Bellagio
Las Vegas, NV
July 11- 17, 2008
Legends of Poker
The Bicycle Casino
Los Angeles, CA
Aug 23 – 28, 2008
Borgata Poker Open
Borgata
Atlantic City, NJ
Sept 14 – 18, 2008
North American Poker Championship
Fallsview Resort Casino
Niagara Falls, Canada
October 10 – 16, 2008
Festa Al Lago
Bellagio
Las Vegas, NV
October 20 – 25, 2008
World Poker Finals
Foxwoods Resort Casino
Mashantucket, CT
Nov 5 – 11, 2008
Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic
Bellagio
Las Vegas, NV
Dec 13 – 19, 2008
Gulf Coast Poker Championship
Beau Rivage
Biloxi, MS
Jan 16 - 19, 2009
Borgata Poker Classic
Borgata
Atlantic City, NJ
Jan 25 – 29, 2009
L.A. Poker Classic
Commerce Casino
Los Angeles, CA
Feb 28 – March 5, 2009
WPT Celebrity Invitational
Commerce Casino
Los Angeles, CA
Mar 7 – Mar 9, 2009
Bay 101 Shooting Star
Bay 101
San Jose, CA
Mar 16 – 20, 2009
Foxwoods Poker Classic
Foxwoods Resort Casino
Apr 4 – 9, 2009
WPT World Championship
Bellagio
Las Vegas, NV
Apr 18 – 25, 2009
Missed any of the action from Season Six? Check out PocketFivesLive.com, your home for online poker players competing in the biggest live tournaments.