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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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WORLD POKER TOUR
Steven Lipscomb
Steven Lipscomb learned to play poker from his devoutly Baptist grandmother
for peanuts (literally) at a family reunion when he was eight. If he had
known that one day he would be the catalyst for transforming the game
into a televised sports phenomenon, he likely would have paid more attention.
When a childhood friend asked Steve, an award-winning film and television
producer, to direct and produce a one-hour poker documentary for the Discovery
Channel, it opened his eyes to the poker world and introduced him to the
remarkable game of no-limit Texas hold‘em. His affinity for the
game and the knowledge he gained deconstructing the game for presentation
to a wider audience helped Steve win the first poker tournament he ever
entered.
Steve’s foresight and love for the game led him to write a business
plan for the World Poker Tour. Since that time, he has directed and produced
hundreds of hours of poker tournaments and game-play for television. No
one in the poker world has spent more time interviewing the great players
and delving into the subtleties that make the game both simple and infinitely
complex. His outside perspective, together with his knowledge of poker
in general and tournament strategy in particular, have made him one of
the great students of the game. And the poker world will never be quite
be the same.
World Poker Tour
by Steven Lipscomb
INTRODUCTION
By nature, poker has no defined beginning or end. As Mojo Nixon once
put it, “The best thing about the game is that you can’t lose.
As long as you still play, the worse you can be is behind.” Little
things like sleep, family, and medical necessities may slow the game down
from time to time, but every poker player knows if a game breaks, there’s
always another one on the horizon.
Poker players are the most competitive beings on the planet, so it is
no wonder that a form of poker that leaves only one player standing evolved
out of the older, cash-game format. The new king-of-the-hill, survival-of-the-fittest,
every-man-for-himself brand of poker has become known as tournament poker.
THE ORIGINS OF
TOURNAMENT POKER
As far as anyone can tell, the first poker tournament was held in the
spring of 1969 at the Holiday Inn in Reno, Nevada. One of the pit bosses
threw what he called a Texas Gamblers Convention, inviting wealthy Texans
to Reno to play poker. Legends like Jack Straus, Crandall Addington, Doyle
Brunson, Benny Binion and his son Jack Binion attended.
Known for his ability to recognize and exploit marketing opportunities,
Benny Binion staged a similar event at his casino in downtown Las Vegas
the next year. He called it the World Series of Poker and invited what
he perceived to be the best poker players. After several days of poker,
Benny asked those attending to vote on who they believed to be the best
player, which was Johnny Moss. The next year, each player paid a fixed
amount and played down to one winner, and Moss won again.
Over the course of the next thirty years, with the help of such poker
luminaries as Jack McClelland and Jim Albrecht, Benny and his son developed
a formula for tournament poker that is still used by most card rooms and
casinos today. Tournaments tend to be a series of fixed buy-in poker events,
from seven-card stud to no-limit hold’em, that take place over the
course of two to six weeks, culminating in a championship event. Each
event plays down to one winner.
TOURNAMENT POKER STORMS
INTO THE MAINSTREAM
The format spread, and many card rooms and casinos across the country
began holding poker tournaments with regularity. But by 2001, despite
continued popular interest in the game, the poker business itself was
in decline. Casinos were closing poker rooms across the country to add
more lucrative slot machines. And more ominously, the poker population
was growing older. The way esteemed tournament director Jack McClellan
puts it “The problem with poker was that ten guys would die each
year, and only one would walk through the door—and he was no spring
chicken.” But all that was about to change.
THE BIRTH OF THE WORLD’S
FIRST POKER LEAGUE
In September of 2001, I conceived of and wrote a business plan to launch
the NFL/NBA/PGA of poker, the World Poker Tour. A solid business team
was assembled, composed of branding maven Audrey Kania, production stalwart
Robyn Moder, and poker ambassadors Mike Sexton and Linda Johnson. In October
we approached Lyle Berman, hoping that he would share our vision and help
fund the Tour. Our mission statement was simple: “To launch the
World Poker Tour and establish poker as the next significant televised
mainstream sport.”
Today, that statement sounds much less ambitious than it did at the time.
But given the uncertain state of poker near the end of 2001, it was truly
remarkable that Lyle and his company, Lakes Entertainment, pledged millions
of dollars to help launch the world’s first poker league.
POKER ON TELEVISION
From 2000 to 2001, I pitched televised poker to any broadcaster I imagined
might air the game, including most of the entities now racing to get into
the act. But before the World Poker Tour hit the airwaves, they quite
simply did not believe that poker could garner an American audience. Their
skepticism was well founded.
Poker had been broadcast on television for some time. Beginning in 1987,
Jack Binion had hired production crews to film the World Series of Poker
final event. He would then give the programs to ESPN for broadcast in
exchange for some commercial spots. The result was something that only
diehard poker players could stand to watch for long. The programs ran
as filler in undesirable time slots and served as a constant reminder
to all broadcasters that nine guys sitting around a table playing poker
is not inherently interesting to watch.
It was not until 1999 that a poker tournament was filmed without a casino
having to foot the bill. That year Mark Hickman, a childhood friend, drafted
me to direct and produce a Discovery Channel documentary entitled “On
the Inside of the World Series of Poker.” The documentary introduced
the poker world to a wider audience and rated well enough for the Discovery
Networks to film the event the following two years.
But nothing could have prepared the poker community or television broadcasters
for what happened when the World Poker Tour aired its first season.
TELEVISED POKER AND THE
BIRTH OF THE WORLD POKER TOUR
The World Poker Tour, L.L.C., opened its doors on February 25, 2002,
and quickly signed a who’s who of high-class destination casinos
associated with poker to exclusive, long-term deals. With no broadcast
or cable network deal in place, the WPT promised that, if necessary, it
would buy television airtime in order to prove that there was a market
for televised poker.
The World Series of Poker declined to join the Tour despite the fact that
no broadcaster had plans to film its tournament in 2002. Few people realize
that, at the time, ESPN had not broadcast the WSOP for three years. And,
as far as I can tell, no network had plans to shoot the WSOP that year.
In fact, two weeks before the World Series main event we received a call
from Tex Whitson, who was running the WSOP for Becky Binion-Behnen. He
asked if we could help him film the final table of the WSOP—without
joining the World Poker Tour. The first WPT event was about to take place
at Bellagio, so time simply did not allow us to help. Instead, we directed
him back to the people who had filmed their events in past years. Once
again, the casino paid for the production in hopes that it could be placed
somewhere.
POKER GOES PRIMETIME
In early 2003, Doug DePriest and Steve Cheskin at the Travel Channel
made the World Poker Tour an offer we could not refuse—a weekly,
two-hour prime-time slot on the network and their commitment to establish
Wednesday night as poker night on the Travel Channel year-round. As a
result, we rejected an offer from ESPN to try the show on their air without
a dedicated time slot. We strongly believed that the key to transforming
poker into a televised sport was creating appointment television. And
we were willing to buy airtime to prove it.
Though the show had yet to air, the WPT had already generated a remarkable
amount of positive press, so ESPN wasn’t ready to give up without
a fight. The execs circled back again, offering six one-hour time slots.
But with half of our thirteen episodes already in the can and contractual
obligations to broadcast every episode at least twice, the WPT rejected
the offer.
Having lost the WPT to the Travel Channel, ESPN picked up the 2002 World
Series of Poker and broadcast it in the six one-hour time slots offered
to the WPT. Once ESPN saw the ratings numbers achieved by the WPT in its
first season, it rushed out to secure long-term rights to the WSOP, an
arrangement that has served the network well.
The first episode of the WPT aired on the Travel Channel on March 30,
2003. Few in the poker community had any idea that their world was about
to change forever. And none of it could have happened without the shared
vision of everyone at the WPT, including Lyle Berman, as well as Doug
DePriest, Steve Cheskin, and Billy Campbell at the Travel Channel. Also
critical to the launch and success were important figures in the casino
poker world, including Doug Dalton and Bobby Baldwin at Bellagio, Kathy
Raymond at Foxwoods, Tim Gustin at Commerce, and Kelly O’Hara at
the Bicycle Casino.
TRANSFORMING POKER
INTO A SPORT
A lot of ink has been spilled discussing the WPT Cam that reveals players’
holecards to the television audience. Poker players and journalists alike
have pointed to this innovation by the World Poker Tour as the primary
thing that revolutionized the game and made the broadcasts one of the
most widely viewed series of events ever to hit cable TV. But if it were
really that simple, it stands to reason that the BBC’s Late Night
Poker would have been picked up in the U.S. television market many years
before. Late Night Poker, which predates the WPT, revealed players’
holecards by shooting under the table, but they were unable to make a
sale until after the WPT phenomenon—and by then, they were utilizing
many other WPT innovations.
The truth is that the WPT Cam was part of a much larger package that transformed
poker into a televised sports sensation. Production value was the centerpiece.
The WPT transported an arena across the country and filmed six players
with sixteen cameras instead of nine players with four cameras, as had
been done before. But the production was just the beginning. It took us
eight months to edit the first episode of the World Poker Tour. Working
ten to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, we invented a new language—graphic
and otherwise—to translate poker into a televised sport.
THE GREATEST FORM OF FLATTERY
All newcomers to the televised poker market have copied our formula exactly,
right down to the elements of our graphics pallet. When a player looks
at his cards, his name appears on the bottom left-hand side of the screen
with a shorthand graphic of his cards. The community cards appear beneath
and near the holecard graphics, making it possible for the viewer to follow
the game. A graphic on the top left-hand side of the screen shows the
mounting pot size.
Another innovation, as important as the WPT Cam, was the introduction
of “live fiction” to televised poker. Before the WPT, poker
shows discussed how much time passed and/or how many hands were played
when the audience was not watching. This put televised poker into the
documentary category, making the event feel dated. The World Poker Tour
changed all that and made each two-hour episode appear live. For the first
time, the WPT created an experience that transported the audience into
the game—making people feel like they were sitting in that seat,
making million-dollar decisions on every hand. The result has captured
the imagination of the American television audience.
Yet another major element of the WPT television package was the inclusion
of bios to encourage viewers to pull for certain players. Plus, with the
hard work and cooperation of Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten, we completely
overhauled the poker commentary to minimize “poker-speak”
and make it accessible to a wide audience. Another key component was my
partner Lyle’s insistence on a two-hour format, which is almost
unheard of in television land but necessary for us to explore the rich
nuances of the game. All this is to say that, while the World Poker Tour
did in fact introduce the WPT Cam to the U.S. television audience, the
comprehensive package of innovative elements in the new WPT television
format created the WPT poker phenomenon.
ANYONE CAN PLAY IN
WORLD POKER TOUR EVENTS
The best part about this new league is that, unlike any other sport in
the history of televised sporting events, anyone can play. You don’t
have to qualify. You don’t have to practice six hours a day. You
don’t even have to be good at the game. If you want to have the
experience of playing with the best poker players in the world for millions
of dollars in prize money, all you need to do is buy or win your way into
a World Poker Tour event. And with 40 to 60 percent of all WPT players
coming from low-cost satellite tournaments, where they win their way into
an event for as little as $30, truly anyone can play and win. Sometime
during the season, we will be in your neighborhood. Although we expect
to evolve further over the years, even as I write this I can say that
from June to April, we make a millionaire a month—sometimes two,
three, or more per month. After studying Super/System 2, my guess is you’ll
be motivated to enter a tour event or to try to qualify for one. If so,
you can find out where and how to play at www.WorldPokerTour.com. The
Great American Card Game has finally found a home on the World Poker Tour,
and we look forward to dealing you in.
TIPS FOR COMPETING ON THE WORLD POKER TOUR:
HOW TO BECOME A WPT CHAMPION
Once you make up your mind to take a shot at the big-time, the following
sections will help you get ready for that rendezvous with destiny. Your
first task is to ignore the intimidation factor. WPT tournaments are brimming
with poker legends, but on any given day, if you know how to play tournament
poker and the cards fall your way, you have a legitimate shot at walking
away with the title. And when that happens, you will have forever earned
the right to be called a World Poker Tour Champion.
Step #1: Be Mentally Prepared
Like any athletes, poker players must mentally prepare for every tournament
they enter. New players often mistake the nature of a poker tournament
entirely. They tend to see the contest as a series of hands leading to
an inevitable conclusion—you win or you lose. That doesn’t
even begin to capture it. A poker tournament is a living, breathing, organic
event. No individual hand matters—nor do players. You may get excited
when you knock out Chip Reese, but I assure you, none of us will even
want to hear the story next week. What matters is the tournament itself—and
your place in it. Your only goal is to never find yourself without chips
in front of you. That’s it.
In order to have a shot at experiencing that simple pleasure, you will
need to start thinking of a poker tournament in its entirety—whether
it is a two-hour satellite or a multi-day WPT championship event. You
need to understand the tournament structure, feel the ebb and flow of
the event and recognize the critical moments that determine your place
in that tournament. You will have to prepare yourself before the tournament
begins. You will need to keep your head in the game for the entire duration
of the tournament. And, you will have to find a way to cope with the good
beats and the bad beats that will inevitably come your way. To do this,
you will have to prepare yourself as a warrior prepares for battle—remove
all mental obstacles between you and the final table that lies ahead of
you.
Step #2: Know the Basics of Tournament Poker
This book is filled with the wisdom of some of the greatest players to
ever play the Great American Card Game. I will leave the poker lessons
to them. Suffice to say, you need to know how to play the underlying poker
game at every level. There is no substitute for the knowledge that comes
with experience and practice. The purpose of this section is to adapt
your game to tournament poker. I will focus primarily on no-limit Texas
hold’em—the game of choice on the World Poker Tour. But the
techniques are applicable to any tournament.
It has become something of a cliché to point out that in tournament
poker you cannot reach back into your pocket and get more cash. But that
simple fact makes tournament poker unlike any cash game you have ever
played. And it gives rise to the two most important things to remember
when you play in a poker tournament. I call them poker mantras because
I suggest you say them to yourself before you go to sleep every poker
tournament night, that you chant them in the shower every morning, and
remind yourself of them on every break.
Poker Tournament Mantra #1:
It Is a Game of Traps; Be the Trapper.
More poker tournaments are lost with big cards than with little ones—by
a long shot. You might feel better on the rail talking about how you got
your aces cracked, but the story is always the same from that side of
the rail—you’re out. That’s all there is to it.
Your primary objective is to put yourself in a position to trap. You want
a huge hand—three of a kind or better—with someone else at
the table betting into you with what they think is a big hand. That is
the best way to get chips and build a big stack in a poker tournament.
What you don’t want to be is the guy two hours into the tournament
who is betting into someone else’s straight with a big pair. That
is how you manage to give up all those chips and leave with nothing. So,
be the trapper!
Poker Tournament Mantra #2:
It’s About the Chips.
Play your chips, not your cards. Remember, your goal is simply to keep
and build those chips in front of you. You should always be aware of how
many chips you have and how much you have at risk in a given pot. Any
time you are about to invest a significant percentage of your stack in
a hand, make sure you take the time to ask yourself:
(1) How much have I already invested in the hand and how big is the pot?
(2) What hands, including draws, are out there that can/might beat me?
(3) Am I willing to put the tournament on the line this hand?
You should not feel any time pressure. Great players like Men “the
Master” Nguyen have long known that it is important to reflect on
the big decisions—and they take their time to do so. Make sure to
think through your tournament chip position. If you have not already committed
too much of your stack to the hand, and you think you may be beat—or
even that you may be in a 50-50 race situation—you have a decision
to make. If you have the opportunity to make a bet at the pot, you may
be able to take it down without a showdown. On the other hand, unless
you’re trapping, if someone has bet into you, it is probably time
to pass and wait for a better opportunity. Why jeopardize the chips when
you are not leading the charge?
The key is not to fall in love with a hand that you sense is a loser and
throw away your shot at millions of dollars in prize money and a WPT title.
Watching Phil Hellmuth play tournament poker is a remarkable experience.
When he senses he is beat, he makes some huge laydowns, preserving his
chances of staging a comeback. The exponential nature of betting in no-limit
Texas hold’em makes such comebacks commonplace on the Tour.
Step #3: Make a Plan and Play to Your Strengths
Tournament poker has evolved significantly over the past few years. With
all major events expanding to fields of hundreds or more players, participants
are forced to adjust style and strategy, to adapt to the brave new world
of televised poker. Young guns like Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, and Daniel
Negraneau have developed a super-aggressive style that either takes them
out quickly or allows them to gather chips early. Once they have chips,
they tend to use them mercilessly as weapons against the smaller stacks
at the table, forcing them to make near all-in decisions every time they
play.
Players like Howard Lederer, Dewey Tomko, and Jennifer Harman Traniello
have used a solid approach to great effect. They tend to choose their
spots, waiting for strong hands and milking them for all they are worth.
Once they get chips, they tend to mix it up a little more, but they also
seem to hold on to the chips they win, building gradually to the final
table. It is important for you to figure out what kind of player you think
you are and to create a plan of attack for the tournament, from beginning
to end.
Step #4: See the Whole Tournament
There are three basic phases of a tournament—all defined by how
much pressure the antes and blinds are putting on your chip stack:
Phase 1 = Slight Pressure
Phase 2 = Moderate Pressure
Phase 3 = Significant Pressure
Good tournament structures are designed to slowly increase antes and
blinds, giving strong players plenty of time to maneuver in Phase 1. But
be aware that one unfortunate hand at the beginning of a tournament may
put you in Phase 3 while most players are still enjoying Phase 1. And
you may run well enough to stay in Phase 1 all the way to the final table.
You should always be aware not only of what phase you are in, but also
of what phase every player at your table is in, relative to their own
chips. That will help you be aware of when you need to adjust your play,
as well as when the other players may be opening up their game (i.e. playing
weaker hands) out of necessity.
You will want to adjust the parameters for your own style of play, but
here are some simple rules of thumb to go by:
(1) Phase 1 (Slight Pressure): You have enough chips to play eleven to
fifteen rounds, meaning you can pay antes and blinds for the dealer button
to move eleven to fifteen times around the table.
(2) Phase 2 (Moderate Pressure): You have enough chips to play eight to
ten rounds.
(3) Phase 3 (Significant Pressure): You only have enough chips to play
seven rounds or fewer.
All major tournaments publish structure sheets. Pick up a copy when you
register so that you can study how many chips you start with and how quickly
the blinds and antes increase.
Phase 1
T. J. Cloutier calls Phase 1 “survival day.” The idea is not
to get yourself stuck in a hand that you don’t control or can’t
get out of. On the other hand, you want to get as many other players stuck
in your web as you possibly can.
The critical thing to recognize about Phase 1 is that it often lasts a
long time, even days. If you never played a hand on the first day of a
World Poker Tour event, you would almost certainly still have chips at
the end of the day—despite the fact that the field would have narrowed
significantly.
Think of Phase 1 as your opportunity to trap players and build chips.
For a more detailed analysis of Phase 1 play, see Doyle’s “Tournament
Overview.”
Phase 2
At various points in the tournament, either because you have lost chips
or because the structure has escalated, you will begin to feel the pressure
of the antes and blinds on your chip stack. If you are a solid player,
you will probably want to wait for strong opportunities to take a stand,
play a hand aggressively, and hopefully double-up or win a significant
pot.
In Phase 2 it becomes more expensive to splash around with small pairs
and trapping hands. Your goal should be to conserve chips while playing
aggressively with a strong hand when you get it. This conservative approach
may also give you the opportunity to bluff and rob blinds from time to
time.
If you are an aggressive player, you might want to do exactly the opposite—open
up your game, take more chances, and dare someone to chase you down. If
your table image allows you to pick up lots of small pots, you might climb
your way back up the chip stack ladder.
Phase 3
At some point in the tournament, you are likely to reach a spot in which
your chips are low enough to make you fear extinction. This is Phase 3.
What you want to try to avoid at all costs is letting your stack get so
low that doubling up will not help or make a difference.
When you reach Phase 3, your inner poker spirit comes to life. As you
get down to ten times the big blind, you will need to find a hand fairly
soon that you are willing to take all the way. You need to put on your
best Gus Hansen/Layne Flack/Devilfish Ulliot impression and try to scrap
your way back into contention.
But, again, you should never give up. If you have chosen a hand—and
the flop manages to decimate that choice—and you don’t think
you have a prayer of buying the pot with your remaining chips, you may
want to fold to give yourself one more shot. The old poker adage of “All
you need is a chip and a chair” has been born out time and time
again in tournament poker.
Pay Attention To the Ebb and Flow
of the Tournament
It sounds strange, but there really is a flow to every tournament. Critical
moments help determine that flow. The two most potent and recognizable
of these moments are when players are on the bubble, which means everyone
is in the money except for the next person out, and when players are on
the television bubble, meaning the next person out won’t be on television.
I have seen play come to a screeching halt for six hours when seven guys
are left and they all want to be on prime-time television. It is wise
to keep track of when both of these moments are near and to decide how
and if you want to take advantage of them.
In both cases, play slows because no one wants to risk going out next.
Because the blinds and antes are often significant at this stage in the
event, tournament greats like T. J. Cloutier counsel players to go on
the offensive during these periods and gather as many chips as possible.
In addition to specific moments, you should pay attention to the overall
flow of the tournament. There are times when your table—and even
the whole tournament—will simply become more or less aggressive.
Adjusting your style to counter the ebbs and flows will help you grow
your chip stack.
A Word on Bluffing
There are two truths to bluffing in tournament poker. First, it is highly
overrated. And second, it is absolutely essential.
My partner Lyle Berman and I have often discussed the frustration of playing
solid poker for three days and then throwing off half of our chips with
a stupid bluff.
The biggest danger is trying to bluff the wrong person—usually when
you are tired. And it hurts every time. You should not feel like you have
to bluff just to be cool or because you are bored. If you have lots of
chips, guard them well and if you do choose to bluff, choose the better
players that know enough to be bluffed out of a pot.
On the other hand, the reason bluffing is essential to tournament poker
is because it is the language of power in poker. The geniuses of the game
are the Doyle Brunsons and Gus Hansens of the world who aren’t playing
their cards at all, but are playing you when they bluff at you. That is
the magic that you can only experience and learn by coming out and playing
the game with the best in the world—in order to see how you stack
up on the green felt. But be aware that to win a major poker tournament
today, you will absolutely have to steal blinds and antes from time to
time and bluff at some pots with a mediocre hand or no hand at all. And
that is what makes the game so damn great.
The Final Table
Once you make it to the final table, nothing really changes—but
everything changes. You want to continue trapping players and playing
your chips, as well as theirs. But now an important element is added.
Every player that goes out means a significant jump in the piece of the
prize money for those that remain. The big players say that they are always
shooting for first place, but as prize pools rocket into the stratosphere,
it clearly affects how people play. The thing to remember is that in order
to win, you only have to knock one player out of a tournament—the
guy who gets second. On the other hand, if players are being tight, it
provides an amazing opportunity for you to mix up your game, pick up chips,
and become a poker superstar.
AN INVITATION
Tournament poker is just about as fun as anything I have ever witnessed.
World Poker Tour events have all the trappings and all the thrills of
major league sporting events with the unique twist that you can come and
play. And while your risk is limited to the buy-in, the multi-million
dollar upside has changed the lives of participants. The WPT millionaires
club is adding new members every month of our season. With a little preparation
and the right focus, you have a legitimate shot at becoming the next member
of that exclusive club. We encourage you to get your feet wet and begin
exploring the tournament side of your game. The cameras are rolling. We
look forward to seeing you at the WPT final table.
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