Professional Poker Tournaments

This is an article about Professional Poker tournaments. Look here for a list of Vegas poker tournaments and online poker tournaments.

Before Las Vegas

In the days before the big rise in Las Vegas mega-Casinos and the popularity of televised poker, professional players were called "rounders." Rounders were itinerants always "looking for action," that is, a game with stakes high enough to justify sitting down for a while and players who will lose to superior play. Even today, many pros still make a good living looking for what are called "cash games" or "ring games."

In the old days, a casino might organize a big poker event in order to attract more business. These events were "tournaments," and for many years, they were local to a particular establishment. In the 1950's and 1960's a town or city might organize a tournament that would involve more than thirty-two players, and take in a geographical reach of a state or two. Tournaments, however, did not have anything like the cash payoffs seen today, and it would have been a meager life indeed to try to live off tournament winnings alone.

Las Vegas Tournaments

With the rise of the large Las Vegas casinos in the 1970's and the eventual opening up of card rooms and casinos in other states, the tournament situation changed slowly, but dramatically.

The World Series of Poker was organized in Las Vegas in 1970, with the participation of several top players. In the first year, Johnny Moss was declared the winner by a vote of the few who were present, and his prize was a silver cup. Since that time the WSOP has awarded bracelets of precious metals and increasing amounts of cash to winners in the several different events of the series. There is always a "main event" to determine the year's top champion. In 2007, the Main Event champion was Jerry Yang, a 39-year old social worker from California, who won not only a gold bracelet, but $8,250,000. In modern times it is clearly possible to make a living by winning poker tournaments. In fact, a prudent winner can win enough for the rest of his life. By comparison to the embattled few at the first WSOP event, the 2007 winner had to overcome a field of 6,357 registrants in the Main Event.

The Love Affair with Television

By the year 2000 professional poker had acquired a television audience that rivaled those of golf and tennis. The meteoric rise of Internet gaming also contributed many new fans each year. There was a need to provide more entertainment for the fans. In response, the World Poker Tour was created. It joins the World Series of Poker as one of two notable series of tournaments, played in different venues of the world throughout the year.

Other Tournaments

In response to the popular acceptance of the WSOP and the WPT, several other major poker tournaments have proliferated internationally. The Australian Poker Championship (known as "Aussie Millions") began in 1998 at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. Over the years it has grown to become the biggest tournament in the Southern Hemisphere. The winner of the major event receives prize money of over AU$1.6 million, and the total pool is almost AU$8 million. By 2007 the number of players had grown to 780, with 80 finishing in the money. A 21-year-old Russian named Alexander Kostritsyn won the event in January of 2007.

The "United States Poker Championship" (USPC) has been held every year since 1996 at Donald Trump's Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Over the period of about three weeks players meet in different events, somewhat like the WSOP format, and then there is a final event of no limit Texas Hold'em. First prize is usually somewhat above half a million dollars. ESPN televises the event.

The "Poker Million" was first held on the Isle of Man in 2000. The second season was in 2003, and it is now an annual event, held in England and sponsored by Ladbrokes, a British gaming company listed on the London stock exchange, an online casino, and the largest retail bookmaker in the world. The innovations of the telecast included the "pocket cam" (an under-table camera developed for the show "Late Night Poker," which revealed the players' hole cards) and heart monitors on the players. The "Poker Million VI" in December of 2007 awarded a $1 million first prize. Sky Sports handles the broadcasts.

The "World Heads-Up Poker Championship" (WHPC) started in 2001 in Europe, using the elimination format common in chess tournaments. Barcelona hosts the event. Its success led to a "National Heads-Up Poker Championship" in the United States, starting in 2005. A bracket of 64 of some of the biggest names in poker compete.

The "William Hill Poker Grand Prix" was created in 2005-06 to entertain European poker audiences with yet another tournament format. The first two annual tournaments (2006, 2007) aired on Sky Sports. Each tournament has seven preliminary tables, with a semi-final table for the seven second place finishers. The final table is made up of the seven first place finishers and the winner of the semi-final round. The buy-in was £6,000 in 2006. Some players qualified by way of online satellite tournaments. Phil Laak won the event and £150,000. The following year Martin Wendt took first place and won £180,000.

Other TV Initiatives

In addition to the World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker, and the several other televised tournaments, poker entrepreneurs created a few other ventures to fill the apparently insatiable appetite of the TV audience for poker drama. Some of these initiatives were not successful. Others were.

"Late Night Poker" was a television series from Britain, pitting well-known players against each other in No Limit Texas Hold'em. Six "seasons" were filmed between 1999 and 2002. The prizes were around £50,000. It was an extremely popular show in Europe and also in the United States, where episodes are still occasionally aired on cable. The "pocket cam," which disclosed the players' hole cards to the television audience, was an innovation in this series.

"Poker After Dark" is similar in concept to "Late-Night Poker." Produced in the United States, "Poker After Dark" showed season one starting in January of 2007 and season two towards the end of 2007. Each show provides an hour of poker play. It is broadcast by NBC, six nights per week. Shana Hiatt, who became well-known as a host in the first three seasons of the WPT, presented the shows.

"Ultimate Poker Challenge" (UPC) was a syndicated television series, featuring a poker tournament each week, with semi-final and final episodes at the end of each season. It started in 2005 and went through three seasons, the final one being taped at Binion's in downtown Las Vegas. In 2006 UPC diversified a bit, holding special events for women, and inviting different poker professionals to add color commentary as guests on the programs. As of 2008 the program has changed its name and format. Now it is "Ultimate Poker Challenge Presents Cash Poker, The Ultimate Gamble." The premise is following action at interesting cash games.

European Expansion

With the exception of the United States, online gaming is perfectly legal in most places in the world. In Europe it has spurred a whole new interest in poker. As a result, a number of new "international" tournaments have been formed, somewhat in imitation of or in response to the World Poker Tour. The WSOP has inaugurated a European version of itself, and several other tournaments have held their inaugural events throughout the United Kingdom and the continent. In Europe, most of the fans and a good many of the players have been brought up in the discipline of poker by means of the online gambling web sites, and many of the tournament contestants either qualify through online tournaments or earn their entry fees by winning online.

Additional Tournaments

As if the WSOP, the WPT, the Internet-based gaming and the television poker programs were not enough, other entities have taken shape and come forward to organize additional tournaments, often in promotion of a particular casino or product. Online casinos have also been instrumental in putting together both online and live tournaments.

In an innovative move, Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, one of the world's leading online gambling companies and operator of PartyPoker.com, established an online tournament called "PartyPoker Million" (PPM). Then, in promotion of the Internet site and the (frequent) online events, PartyPoker.com sponsored a cruise on which a live tournament would be played. PartyGaming chartered a Holland America line cruise ship and left from San Diego for the beaches along the Mexican Coast. The event was highly successful. Kathy Liebert became the first female poker player to win a $1 million prize. The cruises led to PPM II, PPM III and so on. As of 2008, PPM VI launched in the Mediterranean, going from Italy, to Greece and Turkey. In its second year, the Partypoker Million tournament became an integral part of the World Poker Tour, where it has resided ever since.

UltimateBet, another large and well-know online poker room, also started a live tournament in 2002 called the Aruba Classic. By linking up with the travel channel, the promoters were able to combine tropical paradise and poker in a way that caught on both with the television audience and also with the World Poker Tour, which put the Aruba Classic on its annual schedule. In its sixth year (fall of 2007). 548 players spent a week in Aruba contesting a prize pool of nearly $3 million.

PokerStars.net, a prominent online poker site that can boast the endorsement of many top-ranked poker professionals, also established a tournament in a sunny climate for the world's leading competitors. The Caribbean Poker Adventure was started in 2004 at the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island, Bahamas. The 2008 event was completed in early January. The victor was French player Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, who won $2,000,000 from a field of 1136.

Return to the Cash Game

As a result of all this growth in the supply of poker tournament entertainment, an active poker-playing professional can spend just about every day somewhere on the globe at a green felt table.

Not surprisingly, travel-weary professionals who have already taken in a few million dollars in winnings are not always motivated to run off to another exotic location to play cards in a windowless room. But just as the ranks of the fans have increased, so also has the pool of would-be winners. Unlike the "old days," in which the number of professionals may have numbered less than two dozen, now many hundreds - indeed thousands - of ambitious players are seeking to cut their teeth at a televised poker tournament table. Industry promoters encourage and even sponsor many of these players, especially those who are energetic and ambitious and perfectly willing to engage in showmanship and marketing almost around the clock.

Many of the "old guard" and quite a few of the newcomers have retreated back to the elegant poker rooms of Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Atlantic City, to play "cash games" once again. Unlike the days of the rounders, these cash games can be extremely high-stake games and thrilling in their own right. In 2006, Phil Ivey, a respected professional, won over $16 million from Texas mogul Andy Beal in a three-day heads-up cash game. Many casinos, like the Bellagio, for example, have regular schedules of important cash games. Anyone with the chips can join, including the casual Las Vegas vacationer, if he or she is so inclined.

Many professionals also find themselves making the rounds at the online poker tables.

Individuality

Throughout this checkered history of professional poker, the principal of individuality has been preserved. Unlike sports like golf and tennis, in which "professional status" is an important formality, poker lets this be self-defining. If a person has to work another job to sustain his poker playing, then he's not a pro. If he can quit his job and play poker as much as he wants in order to pay the bills, then he is a pro. Even though the corrupting influence of television may incite some players to "showboat" with temper and bratty antics, their colleagues are reasonably tolerant of their non-conformist looks and behavior. It is a matter of personal freedom. People are allowed to be whoever they wish to be, for so long as they don't cheat.