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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

April 05, 2008

What's up with the WPT?

I don't have any agenda or issues with the World Poker Tour. At least I didn't.

When this phenomenal concept for televised poker competition was introduced some years back, I wrote that it would be bad for poker. After the article appeared here, probably read by a total of a half-dozen people, I received an email from a top-level person in the WPT asking me to make contact. (I'll refer to this person as "he," even though it could have been a woman.) He wanted me to contact him to discuss the article.

I never followed up on the request because I believed I had good reason for my opinion and I had a forum to state that opinion. I realized it might hurt somebody's feelings but I doubted seriously it would hurt the concept.

I never followed up because after years of writing puff pieces to satisfy advertisers, I decided to refrain from touting product of any kind unless I could discuss good, bad or neutral thoughts. The call from the WPT suggested, in my mind at least, that somebody wanted to convince me I was wrong. I, on the other hand, rationalized that sooner or later this person would understand that controversy is often good publicity.

Well, I'm about to express my opinion again, thanks in part to an email I received from a female who is thinking of entering the Ladies World Poker Tour Championship event scheduled for April 13 at Bellagio, a scant week two weeks from now. And my opinion will be controversial, I'm sure.

It seems this person who sent the email, and probably many others, didn't see the January press release put out by the World Poker Tour in which the tour announced it would take 15% of every buy-in off the top, and donate it to the Susan G. Korman for the Cure, a charitable group fighting to put an end to breast cancer.

The tour probably gets a lot of extra publicity from its affiliation with the charity and with the contribution it will make.

WHOOPS, let's back up a minute. I meant to say, the tour will get a lot of extra publicity, etc. from the contribution the LADIES will make, albeit without redress.

I won't argue about donating to charity but I will argue against taking the money from the entry fees and away from the prize pool without making the small print in the entry information large enough for even those with the world's worst case of presbyopia to see. (And who received the original press information anyhow?)

I don't see any money from any other event being donated to prostate cancer charities. I bet if the WPT took 15% off the top from a tournament entered mostly by men, there'd be some really negative publicity.

The gentlemanly thing to do when the WPT decided to donate to this charity would have been to take it out of their own coffers, to take it from the cash box at their boot camps, their cruises, their online poker revenue, their WPT: The Official World Poker Tour Magazine (I've never seen a print copy but I assume it exists.), but not from the buy-in money. (Certainly if they can give 35% to affiliates, they should be able to give 15% to a worthy charity.)

It's damned expensive to make money in poker, more so in tournament poker where in addition to buy-in money you have to pay travel expenses, food, phone, and other living expenses while on the road. That's okay if you manage to make it to that part of the event where you have an overlay.

And before you start up with the idea of banishing women-only events, think twice. They represent a lot of money and a lot of publicity.

So, all I can say is "Sorry, folks, this is a low-class move from an otherwise classy outfit. And to make the point, I think I have to be this harsh."

Change your minds about taking the money from the prize pool, be ladies and gentlemen and donate it from the company (or at least from BOTH championship events.