Jeff Haney learns of the pluses of World Poker’s new network deal from the tour’s founder: More drama in less time, and an innovative TV ally

By Jeff Haney

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Even the founder of the World Poker Tour acknowledges a quirk, an inherent flaw, in the presentation of the organization’s made-for-TV tournaments to date.

Let’s say eight minutes remain in a particular two-hour program and Gus Hansen, for example, has almost all the chips while his opponent’s stack has dwindled almost to the felt.

You know Gus is going to win. There’s not enough time for a comeback. There’s no drama, unless you want to see which two cards the doomed runner-up chooses for a desperate all-in move.

That will change with World Poker’s new TV affiliation with Fox Sports Network, said Steve Lipscomb, who founded the World Poker Tour in 2002 and serves as the company’s president and chief executive.

The deal with FSN, announced last week, provides for 26 one-hour episodes, a more flexible format and other innovative features that appeal to Lipscomb.

“We’ve been a two-hour format, in which you pretty much know when it’s coming to an end,” Lipscomb said in an interview at the Bellagio shortly after he announced the TV deal. “So that was one of the things we struggled with and tried to tell that story the best way we could. With the one-hour shows, in the middle of a heads-up match, it may look like it’s over but there’s a great comeback on the way. You won’t know in the last 10 minutes what’s going to happen.

“What I like about it is you don’t have that fait accompli. You don’t know you’re done. You can’t say it’s over, Gus is going to win.”

The partnership between the World Poker Tour and FSN begins with Season 7 of World Poker, which started with the Bellagio Cup IV tournament last week, won by Mike Watson of Toronto (top prize, $1.6 million).

The World Poker Tour is scheduled to air Sundays on FSN, sometime between 4 and 10 p.m., beginning on a date to be determined.

The FSN affiliation follows five years on the Travel Channel and a season on GSN (formerly the Game Show Network) for World Poker.

“I feel like a man who’s been in the desert waiting for a cold glass of water for a long time,” Lipscomb said. “I would never take anything away from the other partners that we’ve had, because they’ve been very important for the World Poker Tour and for poker to be able to be where it is.

“I think everyone who cares about poker, everyone who wants it to take its rightful place, I believe, among the long-term sports leagues of the world, should be applauding and cheering this move, that there is a vision on the broadcast side of it with FSN that understands what poker can and should be. This is an opportunity to show what it can really do.”

Fox Sports has established itself as an innovator in the brief history of televised poker, showing live tournaments and adopting novelties such as the heart-rate monitor it used in broadcasts of the Poker Dome Challenge.

The network will bring that risk-taking approach to its partnership with World Poker, said George Greenberg, FSN’s executive vice president of programming and production.

“Take a look at our poker programming and what we’ve done with it,” Greenberg said. “We’ve shown live poker, which people thought was insanity. But to us, it’s a sporting event and a challenge. With the World Poker Tour, there are so many ways to go with this using the technology of Fox Sports. If there’s a chance to do something, we’ll take the chance.

“And sometimes you make mistakes. Look, was the glowing puck the greatest invention? Well, from that glowing puck actually came the first-down marker. We’ll continue to take chances, and I promise you, we’re going to activate this show.”

Lipscomb also hopes the FSN production of World Poker tournaments will yield fewer so-called “race” hands — those in which all of the money goes into the pot before the flop with one player holding two high cards such as ace-king and the other holding something like a pair of 10s, for essentially a coin flip — and more analysis of the strategic aspects of tournament poker.

“Because of the nature of the audience at FSN as well as the edginess of the network, I believe we have the freedom to express some of the more interesting, gritty and sexy sides of poker,” Lipscomb said. “What we can do together is help the perception of poker as a sport, to completely legitimize it. It will look more and more like a sport, and that’s a great thing.”