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Turning the Game of Poker into a Sport of Champions
The North American Poker Tour
(NAPT) is set to become the next
major tour to grace television land.
Why do we need yet another poker
tour on TV? Because the NAPT
keeps out the riffraff by limiting
entry to the top players in the world;
they ensure that the tournaments are true
tests of skill; and because they have brought
tournament impresario Matt Savage on
board. Savage, for those of you who are as of
yet uninitiated, is the number one televised
tournament director in the world.
According to NAPT President and COO,
Joseph Wade Mézey, the tour has been modelled
after the PGA Tour. “Only professional
players are invited to play on the North
American Poker Tour. We want to move away
from the idea that anyone can win. And we
want to stay away from the large fields.”
To keep their tournament a measure of
skill, Mézey will limit this year’s $10,000
buy-in event to 270 players, and the only way
players can gain entry into the event is to
earn it through proven poker prowess. Only
the top 200 players in the world, as ranked by
Bluff Magazine and Card Player Magazine,
are invited to buy into the tourney. Any player
not in the top 200 will have to win a qualifying
tournament in order to join. And out of
the 270, fifty seats will be reserved for the
NAPT A-team. “We will sign up fifty players
to play a minimum of 80% of the events. We’ll
pay for their buy-ins, hotels, travel; essentially
we will use them as our core group of players,”
said Mézey.
But a great concept wasn’t enough to bring
his idea into fruition; Mézey needed Matt
Savage, with his knowledge of the poker community,
to get his baby off the ground. “My
partner Will (Waldrop) and I called Matt
Savage in and ran our idea by him. He came
on board to help us develop the model. Matt
and I spent about four months going through
different ideas and models, refining the
concept. Then we approached the players
for feedback.”
The players liked the model that Mézey
and Waldrop developed with Savage, and the
NAPT was born. But beyond the hard-nosed
pros, the team needed some young blood to
make their tournaments truly representative
of the North American poker player - that’s
where “the net” comes in. “We wanted to get
a lot of younger internet players. We wanted
to pull from that demographic because it
reflects the poker scene today.”
Of course, that’s not to say the NAPT is
missing any of the big names. All the big
names are board, including Annie Duke,
Daniel Negreanu, Howard Lederer, and
Antonio Esfandiari; making the NAPT a fully
rounded field of battle, where only the most
deserving players compete for their share of
wealth and glory.
By the end of 2006, the NAPT will have
found who it believes is the best player in
North America. Rankings to determine the
ultimate winner will be based on prize money
won during the seven stops on the NAPT,
thus determining the champion on the final
stop. The events will include a 300 No Limit;
500 No Limit; 1,000 No Limit; a 2,000 No
Limit; a 5,000 Limit; a 5,000 Chinese game; and the 10,000 No Limit tournament.
“All main events will be five days, and there is
a no-crapshoot final table structure,” says Matt
Savage, who is operating the NAPT with an
extremely slow blind structure, by televised tournament
standards. According to Mézey, most
tournaments are operated to fit into the television
production schedule issued by the TV networks.
His tour is going to force the networks to
work around the schedule of his tournaments.
But beyond offering a slow blind structure,
Savage has a few other tricks up his sleeve. For
instance, Savage is using the Second-Chance
tournament structure that he introduced to the
world at the Monte Carlo Millions. With this
structure, the last seat at the final table is awarded
to the winner of a one-day “consolation” tournament,
which is open to all players that didn’t
originally make the final table. In the case of the
Monte Carlo Millions, this gained John Juanda a
seat at the final table.
But besides being a great tour to play in, the
NAPT’s ultimate goal is to use the structure of
the North American Poker Tour to change poker
from a game into a sport. Modelling the tour
after the PGA, Mézey believes that he can
change the future of poker. “Our goal is to
change the way that poker’s looked at by making
it more of a sport: focusing on the skill and how
difficult it is to actually be a professional poker
player.” And judging by the talent he has on
board, the thought he has put into this project,
and the support he is receiving from the poker
community, the NAPT is well on its way to making
an indelible mark on the history of poker.
MATT SAVAGE:
“The overall vision of the NAPT is for players to be
part owners of the tour and give them a voice in the
decisionmaking process; to promote the game of poker
and make and create stars that will represent the tour
in a professional manner; to create fair equitable structures
that will be a true test of poker skill; and to become
the first true tour, as players will have to qualify
(by being in the Top 200 of the Bluff and Card Player
rankings) or win their way into the main event.”
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