All WSOP-long I\’ve been seeing Lyle Berman and feeling torn between my journalistic ethos and respect for poker etiquette. Here, the guy who has answers to everything everyone wants to know about the future of the World Poker Tour has been anywhere from 10-feet to 100 yards away from me, but I can\’t bring myself to approach him mid-tourney or just after a painful bustout to pepper him with questions about whether or not the business he helped build is crumbling. Call me a wussy journo or poker fanboy, but could I really take a chance of putting Mr. Berman on tilt, especially when WPTE stock is trading for less than a dollar a share and he might really need the prize money?
But lo and behold, WPT CEO Steve Lipscomb showed up at the Rio yesterday, and he wasn\’t playing! He was just taking his annual tour of the WSOP main event with buddy Jeffrey Pollack … which seemed like a great time to trip him by the shoelaces, pin him down on the ground and shove a recorder in his face while threatening to pop him with a loogie. Alas, no one had a concealed watergun in the pressbox and he was wearing loafers, but still … Lipscomb did sit down with Pokerati for almost a half hour during the main event and give some frank(ish) answers to whatever softballs I could hurl at him.
(NOTE: I didn\’t know at the time that the WPT had laid off about 10 people last week and was about to give a few more their walking papers today — but now his comments about hating that part of the job make a little more sense.)
What you don\’t hear below …
OK, now here\’s the bad part: This was totally impromptu — had about 10 seconds to prepare — and because I\’ve hardly used my recorder this WSOP (we\’ve been using Pauly\’s device for Tao of Pokerati) I must\’ve pressed some wrong buttons or something … because the first five or six minutes just ain\’t there. Grrr. And of course I wasn\’t taking notes because I was too busy pressing buttons on the recorder. So here\’s a quick summary of what we talked about during that time — you\’ll just have to take my word or wait for Steve Lipscomb to post a comment correcting me:
Dan: So, what\’s going on with the WPT?
Steve: Lots of stuff. Reinventing selves. Isn\’t the WSOP great? Can\’t tell you exactly what the WPT has working in terms of TV deals, but we\’re gonna be announcing something about it really soon.
Dan: Really soon like two days or like two months?
Steve: Can\’t say, but we were hoping to have it out before the main event, if that tells you anything. [Obvious implications that the deal is probably not with GSN and may or may not be akin to an online poker site time-buy.] Something about time-buys vs. some other television term, something about finding a new broadcast partner …
Dan: Something else, don\’t remember what.
Steve: The WSOP really is great … different animal altogether yadda yadda. WPT played a role in making it all possible. Bad beats in the form of the UIGEA and GSN executive overhaul. People saying that the WPT is going away? Balderdash!
That\’s where the audio picks up …
