Poker News

by Linda Johnson | Published: Jan 31, 2003

World Poker Tour Announcement … On Jan. 7, the Travel Channel announced at the Television Critics Association conference in Los Angeles that it will include the World Poker Tour in its prime-time lineup. The series will begin with a "Sneak Preview Premiere Night" on Sunday, March 30, and will continue as a 13-week series on Wednesdays, 9 p.m.-11 p.m. ET/PT, beginning April 2. The final terms of the deal are in negotiation.

The World Poker Tour will reach its exciting conclusion with the season's grand finale, The World Poker Tour Championship. The finale, hosted by Bellagio in Las Vegas, will feature the winners from the WPT events throughout the 13-tournament season, as well as anyone willing to pay the $25,000 buy-in to what might be the biggest tournament in poker history.

As an announcer for the World Poker Tour, I am pleased to congratulate CEO Steve Lipscomb and Chairman of the Board Lyle Berman for securing this prime-time television spot, which will inevitably increase the population of poker players around the world.

Tournament Etiquette … I recently read an e-mail from Stephen Landrum that read as follows: I've often seen the following in tournaments: When a player is away from the table and a neighboring player folds, the folded player picks up the unprotected hand of the absent player and looks at it before tossing it in to the dealer.

While I have not seen anyone object to this behavior, I think that it is rather unseemly, and definitely against the spirit of the tournament. Even though the folded player is out of the hand, he has information about the hand that no one else at the table has, and that he should not have. There should be an explicit rule preventing this type of behavior. Until there's an actual rule about it, most players won't see that there is anything wrong with it.

I think Stephen makes a good point here. Many players, including me, are guilty of occasionally looking at an absent player's hand before folding it. I had never given it any thought or realized the impropriety of it until I read Stephen's comments. For instance, in discarding another player's hand, if someone looks at it and sees that one of the cards in the hand is the A, then four hearts subsequently appear on the board, that player would know that whoever bet at the pot did so without holding the nuts. No one else would be privy to that information. Now that I have thought about this issue, I can assure you that I will never again look at someone's cards before discarding them, and I hope you feel the same way about this. In fact, I believe this issue is important enough to be considered by the Tournament Directors Association (TDA) at its next rules meeting.

World Poker Players Conference … Mark your calendar and plan to attend the third annual WPPC, scheduled for July 11 at The Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas. The conference will take place the day before the first event of the Orleans Open. Details about the speakers and their topics will be forthcoming.

Now, let's play poker!