Steve Lipscomb, the CEO of the World Poker Tour, posted and emailed an open letter to the poker community asking for input on the WPT final table structure. Although I'm suing the WPT along with 6 other pros, and not currently playing any WPT tournaments, I decided to post my feedback. In case the WPT decides to delete my reply from their forum, I'm also posting it on andybloch.com and here.

1. I don't think there's any need to have a fixed final table structure. The first season of the WPT didn't and that resulted in a greater variety of tables. Certainly, the WPT Championship event should have a slower structure.

As it is, WPT shows all seem almost the same now. A couple of hours of mostly boring steals, followed by all-in poker. A little more variety would be nice.

2. If there is a fixed structure, there should be no 50% or larger jumps. Combine the two structure sheets into one, and shorten the levels, maybe to 40 or 45 minutes. We (Howard, myself, and others) have made this recommendation in the past. Start one or two levels higher if you need to, and make each level or two 5 minutes shorter than the previous level. If you are going to shorten the levels, why wait until heads up?

3. Get an automatic shuffle machine. It might only cut 10 minutes off your production time per episode, but you can probably get one for promotional consideration at no cost to the WPT. (You might even be able to make money on it.) Also, get chips with RFID tags in them, so it's easier to count stacks and bets. Plus, nicer chips would look better on TV and standardized colors would make it easier to follow the action.

4. Get players to act faster. Figure out how to stop players from taking 30 seconds every hand even when the decision is obvious. Work on a time bank system maybe. Mostly, you want to stop players from taking a long time before they fold, since those are the hands you're probably not showing anyway. You don't want someone who got caught stealing to take 30 seconds to fold. That just wastes time. Maybe give the players a cash bonus if they fold faster?

5. Cut down on the TV-related delays. Deal out the flop faster and speed up filming of all-ins. (Personally, I don't like it as a player, a live spectator, or TV viewer, to have to wait to resolve an all-in.) Do you ever see a golf tournament cut to commercial in the middle of a puttro? Or a baseball game in the middle of a hit? Or a football game in the middle of a play?

Stop filming the toast at the end. Instead, you can have a clip recorded separately.

6. The "live fiction" justification is fiction, and no one believes it anymore. It's not necesary now (if it ever was) to draw in or keep viewers. Plus, adding an extra hour or two of play won't change things much.

7. "As a public company, our revenues and costs are transparent."

No, they are not. Only a summary of your revenues and costs are transparent. How much you get paid by the member casinos and Budweiser and your other sponsors, and the terms of those agreements, is not publicly available.

"WPT does not take any percentage out of the prize pool or participate in any "juice" paid by players to enter WPT tournaments."

That is just an accounting trick. The players pay juice to the casinos to enter WPT tournaments, and the casinos pay the WPT. For the purposes of this discussion, is irrelevant whether your agreement with the casinos say the money they pay the WPT comes out of the pool or not. (It may be true that the money the casinos pay you is not a fixed percentage of the juice that we pay, but how does that distinction matter for your argument?) The cost of an extra hour of filming spread out amongst all entrants is a tiny fraction (around 1%) of the juice paid.

The players in the WPT championship paid a total of $798,750 in juice ($1250 per person), roughly 2.5 times what the WPT costs to film the event. You'd have to finish in the top 3 spots to make that much. I think the players wouldn't mind if the WPT charged them $25 per person extra to extend the final table play. With 639 players in that event, that would allow for 3 extra hours at $5,000 per hour.

8.

"Under the current structure, it costs the WPT roughly $300,000 to make each WPT episode." "Every hour beyond 6 hours of play at the TV final table costs the WPT roughly an extra $5,000. At the 8th hour of play, that number escalates to $11,000 per hour."

So, the fixed costs of each WPT show is $270,000, with just $5,000 to $11,000 incremental cost per hour of filming? It seems to me that you could find a few items to trim in the budget that would allow you to film an extra hour or two.

9.

" The Company is currently losing money as it invests in the businesses that it hopes will generate profits for shareholders in the future... "

What's important for this discussion is whether the WPT is making money on the shows, not whether it is showing a taxable net profit on all its activities.

You've admitted that the WPT just about breaks even on filming the show with only the GSN revenue. Add in the payments from the casinos and sponsors, and the DVD and international broadcast rights, and the WPT is making a nice profit on just the show itself. Plus, the WPT is making money in licensing the WPT name. If the WPT is losing money trying to capitalize on other things, that really is irrelevant to the final table structure.