The Professional Poker Tour

The story of the Professional Poker Tour is the story of an upstart poker tournament that failed and was reabsorbed. Think of the Professional Poker Tour as the World Poker Tour's wicked stepbrother, or the prodigal son who returned home penniless and filthy but was met with open arms. Sound a little dramatic? In poker, drama is the name of the game.

The Professional Poker Tour was a series of televised poker tournaments, spinning off from the World Poker Tour television series. It billed itself as the first professional poker league, and was limited to players who had established themselves on the World Poker Tour, World Series of Poker, or major participation on the poker circuit.

Matt Corboy was the lead commentator, with poker pro Mark Seif as color commentator and Kaye Han as floor reporter. The first season, taped in 2005, began airing on cable television's Travel Channel on July 5, 2006. The show was off the air by early 2007.

Events were broadcast across the country and even in Canada -- five shows each event. The first four shows were labeled as quarters, from 1st Quarter to 4th Quarter, reflecting early-round play in the event. The final six-player table was the fifth show of the cycle. This sports-style setup did little to attract a poker-saturated television audience, who were drawn to the "in and out" coverage available at ESPN.

These tournaments were invitation-only freerolls. There was no entry fee, but only certain players were invited. The Professional Poker Tour is also noted for never releasing any kind of list of "invited players". Some poker analysts have compiled their own lists based on the criteria for invitation (found below) but no one has ever seen an exact list of invitees. Why not provide such benign information? Perhaps because no big names ever won.

One odd thing about the Professional Poker Tour is that, in its only valid season, none of the so called "poker superstars" made much of a splash. There were five tournaments valued at just under $230,000 apiece, and of the winners, only Erick Lindgren is really a "known" name outside of the poker circle. Guys like Daniel Negreanu and Doyle Brunson rarely ever even appeared at the final tables. Perhaps the tour suffered because the superstars weren't cleaning up at the tables. Besides Lindgren, poker players John Juanda, Tom McEvoy, Lee Markholt, and Ted Forrest are the only players in the world who can claim a PPT tourney win.

Another oddity about Professional Poker Tour is the way it disbanded -- there was no official announcement, and has never been. What did happen went down like this:

On August 8, 2006, WPT Enterprises announced that the first tournament of the second season of the Professional Poker Tour, at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, had been postponed from September 2006 to an "unknown future date". At the time of the postponement, PPT did not have a contract with any network for television coverage of the second season, a fact unknown by whatever fan base was left.

WPT Enterprises announced on September 28, 2006 that the Foxwoods and Bellagio tournaments were also postponed, this time indefinitely. While there was no announcement, a tournament scheduled for the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles in February 2007 never took place -- some players even showed up to play not knowing the tournament was cancelled. This should have sounded the call to all involved that the PPT was deader than the proverbial doornail.

The tournaments were eventually officially cancelled. When WPT relaunched their website to coincide with their broadcasts moving from Travel Channel to GSN, the Professional Poker Tour section was deleted. The events that comprised the PPT in 2005 were reintegrated into the World Poker Tour schedule in 2007-08. PPT -- we hardly knew ya -- and we didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.

The Professional Poker Tour decided who qualified for their league using a complicated system of criteria, or even arbitrarily granting entrance to poker players they felt "deserved to participate". Any player seeking a so-called "3 year entry" into the PPT (think of this like an exemption into the PGA) should have one of the following criteria:

Any World Poker Tour win
Any player that made more than one World Poker Tour final table in a single season
Top three places in World Poker Tour Championship
Top ten places on World Poker Tour Season 2 Player of the Year list
All previous winners of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event
Top three places in 2003 and 2004 WSOP Main Event
Top ten places on CardPlayer Player of the Year list
Top ten places on Phil Hellmuth Jr Champion of the Year list
Members of the World Poker Tour Walk of Fame
Members of the Poker Hall of Fame

Those players seeking a less prestigious but still potentially lucrative "2 year entry" would have to have had at least a sixth place finish in the WPT Championship or World Series of Poker main events for 2003 or 2004. This rule seems to have been invented to add "buzz heavy" player names into the roster.

Also, as mentioned before, the Professional Poker Tour could arbitrarily hand out 1, 2 or 3 year entries to any players selected by the PPT Advisory Committee, any player from the top ten places on the Poker Europa List for 2004, or any WPT commentators. If it sounds like they were reaching for members of their "league", they probably were.

The Professional Poker Tour withdrew entry from otherwise-qualified players who didn't play at least 2 of the 5 PPT Season 1 events and didn't play at least half of the WPT Season 3 and 4 events. Among the well-known players who were excluded from PPT Season 2 under this rule were Johnny Chan, Sam Farha, Phil Gordon, Chris Moneymaker, and Amarillo Slim.

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