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The high end of professional poker on television is now invitation-only

Dayton Daily News
By Kyle Nagel

WPT Enterprises, which produces World Poker Tour events that air on the Travel Channel, has created a new venture, the Professional Poker Tour. Unlike World Poker Tour events, which can be entered by anyone with money to spare, PPT entries are earned by qualification.

Around 200 players qualified for the PPT. Players are given exemptions of different lengths based on performance. Ron Rose, a Dayton resident and professional poker player, was given a three-year exemption to the PPT, the longest available.

"It's something like the PGA," Rose said from Mashantucket, Conn., the site of the first PPT event. "Not just everybody can buy in, you have to qualify. I think that would make it more fun to watch, knowing that you're watching the best in poker."

While WPT Enterprises has not yet announced where the PPT events will air, it already has started filming. The tournament at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket will finish with the final table today.

The PPT will be a five-event tour with a $2.5 million total purse.

There are several criteria that automatically qualify players for the PPT: making the final table at a World Poker Tour event or championship, scoring in the Top 10 on the WPT points list, winning or placing "highly" in the $10,000 buy-in event at the World Series of Poker, earning a spot on CardPlayer Magazine's Card Player of the Year Top 10 list or Poker Europa's Top 10 or being a member of the Poker Hall of Fame.

Rose won the WPT's Battle of Champions, which aired on Super Bowl Sunday last year.

"This qualifying process ensures that the television audience will have a chance to consistently see the most exciting, skilled poker player and the sport's all-stars," said Steve Lipscomb, president of WPT Enterprises, in a statement. "The PPT will be a league of poker titans."

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Placing bet on poker mag All In

A former dot-com dealmaker is now dealing a new hand in publishing.

All In, a bimonthly magazine about the world of poker, will be launched next month by Bhu Srinivasan.

A 28-year-old former director of business development with InfoSpace.com, Srinivasan once hungered to take over the online mag Salon.com.

After publishing two test issues of All In from Seattle, the editor and publisher moved the mag to Manhattan and lined up Time Warner to distribute the premiere to Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble and other big outlets.

"We expect to be the fastest-growing magazine in 2005," he told the Daily News yesterday, saying he'll guarantee advertisers a circulation of 150,000 by February.

"We believe we'll reach more than 500,000 copies next year, in terms of acquiring new subscriptions," he added.

Srinivasan is counting on the surge in poker-playing shows on TV, starting with the Bravo channel's "Celebrity Poker Showdown," to help boost interest in his mag.

Indeed, "Celebrity Poker" co-host Phil Gordon writes for All In, whose premiere will feature his account of a poker game with quarterback Tom Brady and other New England Patriots. The issue will also carry a 25-page instructional section.

Ben Affleck, who won the California State Poker Championship last summer - a $350,000 prize - was on the cover of the second test issue.

Poker champs Howard Lederer and Chris (Jesus) Ferguson also contribute to the mag.

Srinivasan has talked big before. In 1999, he went from high-flying InfoSpace, which provided infrastructure support to hundreds of Web sites (and enabled him to drive a Jaguar and a BMW), to found and obtain funding for something called ThinkView Inc.

It equipped a bunch of newspapers, magazines and broadcasters to syndicate their content across the Internet before folding in 2001.

That's when Srinivasan boasted about wanting to buy financially challenged Salon.com, ax most of its staff and use the Web site as an ad magnet for showcasing stories from The New Yorker, The Economist and other titles.

Now, as he plans other launches after All In, he said, "I just love the magazine business."

His Web site can be found at allinmagazine.com.

Mind expansion

Advances in psychology and neuroscience are explored in the new Scientific American Mind, a quarterly spinoff from Scientific American.

It's set to debut on newsstands today.

The cover story - "Why We Help: Explaining the Kindness of Strangers" - asks the question, "If we live in a dog-eat-dog world, then why are we frequently so good to each other?"

Other pieces examine how stress affects memory and how to recognize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in kids.

Wired for gadgets

If Newsweek can veer from its news format to publish Tip, a special holiday magazine offering gift and celebration ideas, then Wired can take a break from future gazing to produce Wired Test, a buyer's guide to laptops, phonecams and other gadgets.

The new Wired Test will be on sale until early February.

A spokesman said there are plans to publish it annually, in November.

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Putting on her poker face

Shot at playing on tv draws women to the table

By Dana Bartholomew
Los Angeles Daily News

Posted on Mon, Nov. 22, 2004

BELL GARDENS - When Marla Schram Schwartz sat down at a Southern California poker club two decades ago, men rose from the table and swore never to play with a woman.

Not today. With Texas Hold 'Em transfixing millions of cable TV viewers, poker is red hot. And women have turned the tables as the hottest draws in poker entertainment.

``We're ready now,'' said Schwartz, 48, of Thousand Oaks, raising her arms in victory as she and hundreds of women filed into the Ladies Poker Party tournament tent recently at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens.

The stakes: $35,000 in prizes and a seat at the televised World Poker Tour.

Last year, the World Poker Tour ``Ladies Night Out'' premiere on the Travel Channel was the most-watched poker game in history, with more than 5 million viewers. Organizers expect the December airing of ``Ladies Night Two'' to trump that number.

An American Gaming Association survey found this year that, although men slightly outnumber women as poker players, more women in their 20s and 30s played in 2003 than men in their 40s and 50s.

They're hungrier and smarter, promoters say, and, with honed intuition, can smoke the men at cards.

``The fact is, women can play better than men,'' said Steve Lipscomb, founder of the World Poker Tour.

The neon blinked over ``The Bike'' as 350 women from across the nation put down $20 for registration and $100 for chips during a two-day event planned as the largest-ever women's poker tournament.

There were women, barely 21, escorted by boyfriends who were banned from the tournament tent. Middle-age women in office dress. Grandmothers with rose-colored glasses. Newbie players. Professional winners.

Ready to wager on the three-up ``flop.'' The penultimate ``turn.'' The last and perilous ``river'' card.

Most women say they became hooked on poker when family members coaxed them to the table in search of easy pickings. Many soon bested their brothers, dads or husbands.

``Now I'm hooked. Completely addicted,'' said Patty Huston, 61, of Simi Valley, who began playing tournament Texas No Hold 'Em six months ago with her daughter. ``Our husbands say we can't play really as well as the men.

``But in the home games, I'm usually the last one out, and my husband usually gets knocked out early.''

Evelyn Ng took the pot during the World Poker Tour ``Ladies Night Out'' premiere. ``It takes a lot to be a winner,'' said the 28-year-old poker pro from Toronto. ``You have to be part mathematician, part actor, part psychologist -- and have a real competitive nature,'' she said. ``Aggression is also very important in poker.''

It was Zaynab Mogadam of Canoga Park who would be defeated by Cuiling Zhang of Montebello for the $11,830 top prize and the World Poker Tour seat.

Mogadam, 42, a mother of two and immigrant from Iran who works part time at a card room and plays poker to round out her income, said many women aren't yet serious about professional play.

``You're not at home,'' she said. ``You're not shopping. Some women, they don't understand: This is poker. We're here to gamble. This isn't a party.''

Schwartz started her game trajectory with Go Fish, then poker, then TV game shows, on which she has written a book. She hit the poker clubs 20 years ago when there were but two or three women in the room.

``We're more intuitive. We're better at reading when a man is lying. We don't have that macho testosterone going on, so we're much more humble about winning,'' she said.

``Men, they try to dominate you,'' Schwartz said. ``If they raise, they think you'll be scared. But you know what I tell them? `You can't scare me; I have teenagers.''