World Poker Tour (Cont.)

Given that not all of the hands that get dealt are televised, the commentators will let the viewing audience know what recently happened off camera - who won, who lost and against whom. They let the audience know why a player might be playing extra tight or loose. It also adds a great deal of color to the show. The commentary is geared more toward the novice player.

You can always buy directly into the World Poker Tour Championship which is held in April as part of Bellagio Casino's World Poker Classic. The game is No Limit Texas Hold'em.

The winner of the 2004 World Poker Tour Championship was Martin Deknijff. The 2004 first place prize was $2,728,356, at the time the largest first prize ever paid in tournament poker.

The 2005 World Poker Tour Championship is expected to have an estimated prize pool of over $7 Million. The top 50 players will share in the prize money with first place expected to be about $3 Million.

Players can also get into the World Poker Tour tournaments through satellite poker tournaments. The host casino for each WPT tournament will typically hold satellite poker tournaments.

These satellite tournaments have a smaller buy-in and the winners of the satellite tournaments get their buy-in paid to the World Poker Tour tournament. Bellagio Casino even holds satellite tournaments for the WPT Championship in the weeks preceding the Championship.

The World Poker Tour draws large audiences due to its ability to draw the novice player into the game. Another huge draw of the WPT is that anyone can enter. Most of the tournaments are open to anyone with the money to buy in.

If players do not have the money to spare to buy directly into a tournament, most of the World Poker Tour tournaments have satellite tournaments. This allows novice players to try their hand, potentially winning a spot in one of the WPT tournaments for as little as $10.

The thrill of big money, the ability for anyone to enter, and the high quality television broadcast make the World Poker Tour one of the most popular poker television shows on the air, as well as a very popular series of poker tournaments. A tribute to its popularity, the World Poker Tour Championship, Season 1, was the second highest rated individual program in the Travel Channel history.