World Poker Tour

The World Poker Tour (WPT) is a series of Texas Holdem tourmanents which are mainly held in the United States, but broadcast on televsion around the world.

The show, which is hosted by former WSOP winner Mike Sexton and TV actor Vince Van Patten had its debut season towards the end of 2002 when the idea was launched by television producer Steven Lipscomb who soon become the head of WPT Enterprises (WPTE), the company responsible for the World Poker Tour.

The show is seen by many as a catalist for the growth of online poker in the States. As the program has become more popular, so has the number of players at online poker sites all over the web.

The first series of the show was broadcast on the Travel Channel in the spring of 2003 and a year later was making its network debut on NBC when it aired a special "Battle of Champions" tournament in direct competition with the CBSs Super Bowl XXXVIII pre-game show.

The WPT remained on the Travel Channel for the next five seasons before the WPTE announced that the show would move to GSN when its sixth season opened in the spring of 2008.

During this time, the WPT opened a "Walk of Fame" and inducted those players who they believed had played the game at the highest levels and encouraged the spread of the game of poker throughout the world. The original inductees were Doyle Brunson, Gus Hansen and James Garner.

The show continued to grow in popularity with more and more of the game's most popular players getting involved in the action. The show became so popular that in November 2009, Party Gaming announced they had acquired the rights for the World Poker Tour from the WPTE for a fee believed to be a little under $12,500,000. Today they are the show's primary sponsors.

Now in its seventh season, the show continues to draw some of the brightest lights in the game with players such as Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey and Joe Hachem all making regular appearances on the show, with Gus Hansen being the most succesful player in the history of the tour.

He is only one of four players to finish in the money at least once in all eight series of the WPT. The other players being Erik Seidel, Mark Seif, Surinder Sunar and Phil Hellmuth