World Poker Tour Classic Moments
Are you the type of person who has ever gotten comfortable in the ol’ La-Z-Boy, balancing a big tub of nachos on your belly as you rip the tops off a few frosties with one hand and use the other to hit the remote so you can tune in to the World Series of Poker? No? Perhaps you are a militantly vegan teetotaler who prefers to watch the WPT while eating a single grain of organic rice and twisting yourself into yoga positions that would make a circus contortionist yelp in pain. Either way, it really makes no difference in the enjoyment you probably get from watching the WPT.
The World Poker Tour draws a huge and rabid audience. It’s a series of tournaments featuring a virtual rogue’s gallery of the world’s top professional players. The tour first emerged in 2002, climaxing with the WPT Championship in April 2003 at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas. The first season aired on the Travel Channel on American cable television that spring. The show made its network debut in February of ‘04 on NBC with a special "Battle of Champions" tournament, which aired against CBS coverage of the Super Bowl XXXVIII pre-game show.
One of the most compelling aspects of the WPT is that it’s a truly democratic competition, open to all. If you can afford the "buy-in" (usually at least a grand or two) or manage to win a "satellite" tournament, you could find yourself sitting down on TV with some of the greats. Just try earning a spot in the Super Bowl or Indy 500 that way.
Over the past several years, the WPT has seen many extraordinarily entertaining moments. Each season could individually fill an entire book, but let’s look at one tournament from recent memory that featured two absolutely classic moments. What made these moments so memorable was the merciless dispatch with which winning players’ fortunes were reversed.
The 2005 L.A. Poker Classic (which served as the WPT Main Event Championship that year) at the Commerce Casino built to a virtual frenzy on its second continuous day of competition. Roughly 200 iron-willed players survived the first round of elimination the day before, and were ready to escalate the level of combat. Many spectators could not contain gasps of shock when Freddy Deeb absolutely demolished Daniel Negreanu’s towering stack on chips in a single hand. Equally shocking was the elimination of crowd favorite Evelyn Ng, who was decimated in a brutal mid-day round. Both these jarring occurrences were chilling reminders that in high-stakes poker, it doesn’t take long for the mighty to fall. That’s just one of the things that makes the WPT such damned good television.
Rick “Stone Face” Ellers started playing poker while he was a paratrooper stationed in Fort Bragg, NC. He currently writes part time for PokerListings.com where you can read about Poker Chips and the exciting World Series of Poker.
About the Author
Rating: Not yet rated