Paid to play

[madasahatstand]

cheers ginger

[Royal Flush]

If you are good at shorthanded play then do it, if not dont.

Not much too it, u get paid to play, thats it.

[thetank]

if poker wants to be taken seriously then it needs a proffesstional tour that people can aspire to join, at present we havent got one anyone with enough money can play the top players.

aslong as there is a way into the proffestional tour for the aspiring players then an invited tour where the player play for the sponsors money is a good thing its what happens in every other sport

each year the bottom player in the tour have to play off to get there place on the tour and the top up and coming players get invited into play offs

works for every other indivaul sport ie golf tennis snooker darts sqaush

below the top level the rest play on they just dont compete on the professional tour we stick to playing the same games we always have in our local casino and with a good run of form hope to win our way onto the tour

if the pro tour kicks off there is room for a secondary tour in europe and then britain etc etc

but before we can get sponsor to put money into a tour instead of the players always stumping up we need to have an organistation and we need to have a signature tour getting us the publicity

there will always be us amateurs plays and putting up our own money just as we do each week when we play the weekly medal at golf etc etc

I disagree, there already are certain events that are invitation only, only names invited and their entry paid in, kicking about the telly. They draw about as much attention as the average poker prog. A bit, but not much. Poker is fine just how it is IMHO.

Without the knowledge that these guys have paid there way in, and some may even need a result to keep going, it takes a lot of the drama and romance out of poker on the box. One thing I'd love to see on the telly more is shootouts ala Late Night Poker. With the WPT etc. you see the final table and abody gets a prize. With Pokerden and jazz like that you've got cats going home with hee-haw and that makes better telly IMHO.

Late Night Poker rules, the original is still the best.
Most of the players you've heard of, folk going home with nowt, Jessie May, and little midget dealers. What more could you want?

[Sark79]

I watched John Duthie on poker zone the other night. He was talking to ........?, sorry cant remember his name.

Anyway, he said he had a few new plans to introduce for poker TV over the next few years. These include showing more of the days leading up to the final table. He complained that alot of great play over the first three days is cut out of the final show for TV.

Did you know he directed Hollyoaks in the past?

[AndrewT]

As far as the online poker rooms are concerned, they love the current system. Tour events full of ordinary people who have qualified online. Some of them make the final table and even win, providing great publicity for the rooms and showing Joe Public that they could win hundreds of thousands of dollars simply by playing at Internet Poker Room X.

However, the TV companies hate tables full of internet qualifiers - they know TV audiences want to see name players - the ones on the covers of magazines.

Golf, snooker and tennis don't have this problem, because the influence that luck has in the short term is so much smaller than in poker. There's no way I could beat Tiger Woods over 18 holes, or Ronnie O'Sullivan over 19 frames or Roger Federer over 5 sets, but I could play Phil Ivey heads-up and I might win. Put Phil Ivey on a table with nine internet qualifiers and his chances of winning are less than 50/50.

From a TV perspective, televised events where there are a guaranteed number of big name players is the only way for them to go in order to get big audiences regularly. Of course, what's best for the TV companies and what's best for poker may not necessarily coincide...

[vampitup]

if poker wants to be taken seriously then it needs a proffesstional tour that people can aspire to join, at present we havent got one anyone with enough money can play the top players.

aslong as there is a way into the proffestional tour for the aspiring players then an invited tour where the player play for the sponsors money is a good thing its what happens in every other sport

each year the bottom player in the tour have to play off to get there place on the tour and the top up and coming players get invited into play offs

works for every other indivaul sport ie golf tennis snooker darts sqaush

below the top level the rest play on they just dont compete on the professional tour we stick to playing the same games we always have in our local casino and with a good run of form hope to win our way onto the tour

if the pro tour kicks off there is room for a secondary tour in europe and then britain etc etc

but before we can get sponsor to put money into a tour instead of the players always stumping up we need to have an organistation and we need to have a signature tour getting us the publicity

there will always be us amateurs plays and putting up our own money just as we do each week when we play the weekly medal at golf etc etc

Agree totally with Ironside.  This would be a great step forward in my opinion.

At the moment you have TV companies dictating high level poker tournaments adding little or nothing to the prize pool and often detracting from the actual event by shortening clocks etc...

In other sports such as Golf or Snooker, the individual players don't have to pay to enter tournaments but have to finance themselves with things like travel expenses, and the prize pools are created by sponsors and TV companies.

Only in this way, I believe, will there be a reliable test to who is the world, or europe's, or even the UK's best (or most consistent) poker player.  There could be a series of a number of qualifying tournaments, of which you might have to enter say 20 to qualify, to reduce the luck aspect of it, and the top players enter the professional poker tour, the rest in a satellite tour like they have in Golf for example.  Then the players with the worst results have to qualify with the rest to retain their 'tour card' as in Golf.