Texas Holdem - The Famous World Poker Tour

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010

The World Poker tour draws attention from people in all hemispheres. It is a series of international poker tournaments that pit the world?s best poker players against each other for a large sum of money. The World Poker Tour was started by an attorney and television producer named Stephen Lipscomb, who now controls WPT Enterprises, the firm that runs the World Poker Tour.

The World Poker Tour is televised and had its debut season in 2002 and 2003. It finished with the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. It aired on the Travel Channel in the spring of 2003. The show then debuted on NBC against CBS coverage of the Super Bowl.

The television show has increased the number of home table games around the world, and particularly in western countries, like Canada and the United States. It also contributes to the popularity of other poker-inspired television shows, casino poker room and Online gaming. In fact, the major sponsors of the World Poker Tour are Online gaming sites.

In the World Poker Tour tournaments, each player is given a certain number of chips for a pre-determined amount of money called a buy-in. The poker game continues from there until one player has collected all of the chips. The winner captures around 30 to 35 per cent of the total prize pool. The winner can receive in excess of one million dollars. Even though other players don?t leave the table with any chips, some leave with a portion of the prize pool. For instance, the person who leaves the game in second position usually gets about 20 per cent of the prize pool.

Many people speculate that the reason people are so interested in the World Poker Tour is because of democratic accessibility of the game. Anyone who can afford the initial buy-in, an amount ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 can enter a World Poker Tour tournament. And, if a person can?t afford to pay to enter the tournament, he or she can win a satellite ticket to compete against the top professional players.

Televised poker is gaining popularity now like it never did in the past because of advances in technology. When poker was first televised, viewers could never see the players? hands. Now, people can see the players? hole cards through a small camera in front of them on the poker table. This insider information allows people feel as though they are directly involved in the televised poker games.

Watching the games gets people excited about Texas Hold?em. They want to win money like the pros and they want to win money like the regular, everyday people who have played against the pros and won. This excitement has translated into hundreds of millions of dollars in poker accessory sales in Canada and the United States, as well as the demand for Internet poker from people around the world. Poker is a game that is only going to get more exciting as time goes on.