What is the World Poker Tour?
Thursday, April 12th, 2012There has been a lot of attention placed here lately in the game of poker. This new found love for the game is a direct result of the fact that the world poker tour has went a long way in the last few years to make the sport popular and has led to a boom that is felt all over the internet as well as television.
The real question that has to be asked, is what exactly in the World Poker Tour? The short answer is it is a collection of tournaments that are based on the Texas Hold ‘em style of games. This was founded in 2002 and has experienced a world of excitement in the last few years.
Founded in 2002 by Steve Lipscomb, in its debut it first aired on the Travel Channel here in the United States. This has been the country that it has been popular in for the last few years as it is broadcast here in this country primarily. In 2008, the event began to offer event champions bracelets. This made the event a little more of a legitimate event and allowed participants to feel that they had an event that they could take pride in for the most part. In 2009, the WPT was purchased by Partygames for a sum of over 12 million dollars. The event, however has seen little in the way of actual change.
The broadcast history of the event has been what has helped the event to remain popular as well as helped to boost the popularity of the game. The travel channel as well as NBC, FOX Sports as well as GSN have all come onboard in the past few years to broadcast events and allow people to follow their favorite players. This is a large part of the popularity that the sport has experienced in the last few years and led to a great number of sites to pop up and offer this sport for a person to practice their skills in mock tournaments.