CasinoGaming.com


	Sundays: Inside Gaming Tuesdays: Video Poker Wednesdays: Off the Shelf Fridays: Richard Eng, Player's Edge Saturdays: Pocket Aces

POCKET ACES

Columns

• Back to Maryann's index

• Back to columnists' index

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.

Nov. 29, 2008

Want a Piece of a Poker Pro?

How would you like to get a check every time Kenna James cashes in a poker tournament?

Would you like to have Paul Darden's earnings in your investment portfolio?

Back in the day (BWPT and BESPN/WSOP meaning Before World Poker Tour and Before ESPN / World Series of Poker—televised), the easiest and least wallet-deflating way for a poker pro to get into action at the big buy-in tournaments was to sell pieces of themselves.

No, they didn't sever arms, legs or private parts.

For a fee, which went toward the buy-in, you could purchase a certain percentage of a player's action. If the player made a big score, you got your share. If the player didn't cash, you lost your investment. But the investment didn't have to be the whole buy-in amount. A player could (and did) sell many pieces. In fact, almost verified rumor (I heard it from somebody who heard it from the players himself) has it that some players actually erred and sold more than 100% of their action!

Tournament poker can get expensive. At anywhere from a (cheap) dime ($1,000) to 50 big ones, a player has to move up to big money more than once to ensure a successful career. That and because a lot of poker player go broke on their way back from other negative gambling ventures) is the reason most players found backers in the past.

Those are the same reasons many successful players still sell pieces of their action. And the expense of doing business as a poker pro is probably one of the reasons you can invest in a player like Tom McEvoy or Mark Gregorich or the two pros mentioned in the opening sentences.

Want to know how?

First let me say, this is not a recommendation. Nor is it a link to an affiliate. It's just information.

And with that disclaimer out of the way, here's the scoop.

Does the name Linda Johnson ring a bell? It should. The First Lady of Poker, who took Card Player magazine to the top of the gaming publishing heap and was a principal in the founding of World Poker Tour, is breaking new ground here along. Joining her in a venture called the Pro Poker Exchange (PPX) are such notable names as Mark Tenner, Jan Fisher, Nick Gullo, Bill Biddulph, James Leitner and Alan Losoff. Okay, maybe you haven't heard of all these folks because not all of them are players – at poker that is. Losoff is a former software geek turned poker junkie (Most notably he runs tournaments). Leitner was a systems analyst who plays poker but more often teaches it at the WPT Boot Camps, both of which sound more exciting than analyzing systems, if you ask me. Biddulph was into the mortgage game before he found poker in 2003. Since then he's been cashing chips and consulting behind the scenes for some of the currently running TV poker shows.

The rest of the names should already be in your memory bank, but if they are not, you can find them on the PPX website at propokerexchange.com.

This is an idea just waiting to take off, a unique ground floor opportunity, something that changes poker once again. It's not unlike buying shares in racehorses. I give full credit to these people and hope to hell this takes off.