How the Novice Can Benefit From the World Poker Tour

By now, you should have heard about the World Poker Tour. For those seven people who are living in a poker wasteland, let me briefly recap it. The World Poker Tour (WPT) is a series of big poker tournaments that were, and will continue to be, filmed for a prime time television series. The 13-event series will premiere on the Travel Channel on Sunday, March 30, and will air every Wednesday thereafter beginning April 2. Check your local TV listings for times.

The WPT is the brainchild of casino mogul Lyle Berman and TV producer and poker enthusiast Steve Lipscomb. It is being produced by the same team that produced the Card Player Cruises/Party Poker Million poker show several months ago. The WPT series, however, is being produced on a much larger scale and with all the bells and whistles of real Hollywood stuff! There is smoke and mirrors, and cameras that will enable you to see the players' holecards during the action. It is amazing technology and I could write an entire column about it, but I digress. In this column, I want to tell you what this cool show can do for you as a player.

When you are playing poker, how frequently do you watch the other players when you are not in a hand? (Although that was meant as a rhetorical question, I hope the answer is: "All the time!") So, you digest the action as it occurs and try to figure out what those players are holding. You try to put them on a hand, right? Well, the cool thing about the WPT is that you will get to see what the players are holding when they bet, bluff, raise, call, muck, and spend long periods of time contemplating their next action. Now, the WPT events are no-limit hold'em, but you still can learn from them even if you have never ventured into that arena. You will see that no-limit hold'em is not for the weak; you have to have a tremendous amount of heart to compete. You will see unbelievable plays, as well as plays you won't understand. This is where your learning curve can begin. You can record these shows and watch them again and again to try to see patterns. You also can try to learn the body language of tells, and see what you can pick up.

I am at every final table for the filming, because I am the "statistician" for the WPT. My job consists of noting every action that occurs. I record who bet, called, mucked, raised, check-raised, and so on. I note everything that happens during the final table, even the time that a hand begins. What makes this job so interesting is that I watch everyone's actions and have the opportunity to try to put these expert players on hands. The six players at the final table got there by playing through three to five days of tough poker competition. The starting fields contain the most elite poker players in the world, and most of the buy-ins are $10,000!

Anyway, while I am watching the action, I'm trying to guess the players' holdings. (Remember, I am in the live studio audience, and we can't see the players' holecards. They are seen by only one cameraperson in a secret location, and are edited into the show when it goes to the production studio. So, I can practice my hand-reading skills, and when the show is broadcast, I am able to determine if I was right. Many times, the hands are played out and I get the immediate gratification of knowing if I was right when the cards are tabled.)

These final-table players are generally so awesome that they make plays I can't figure out. For example, recently at the Aviation Club in Paris, France, I was watching the action with the overhead cameraperson who was sitting next to me. We were discussing the hands as they were being played - the "what ifs" and such. The action in one hand in particular was amazing. There was a lot of action preflop, then a bet on the flop and a call. Both players checked on the turn, and on the river, the first player checked and the other made a substantial bet. The player who checked studied for what seemed like an eternity. The cameraperson and I were trying to ascertain what they were holding. Maybe they both held top pair but had different kickers? Maybe they had the same hand? It hadn't played out like a truly huge hand. Anyway, we were still surmising when the player called. He had picked up some tell - I don't know what, but he called with third pair and won the pot. Had he lost that hand, he would have been so crippled that it would have been unlikely that he could recover. What was it that he picked up to make him believe he had the better hand? I will be eager to watch that telecast when it airs to see if perhaps I can figure it out. There were plenty of other hands that we discussed that night, and generally, we were totally wrong on all of them! Go figure. Class dismissed.

As always, please contact me with your poker-related questions and comments. If there is a topic you would like to see discussed here, let me know. For information about Card Player Cruises, please visit the website at www.cardplayercruises.com, or call the office at (702) 655-0919, or (888) 999-4880 if you're not in Las Vegas.