New tour features top poker players

New tour features top poker players By Kyle Nagel Dayton Daily News The high end of professional poker on television is now invitation-only. WPT Enterprises, which produces World Poker Tour events that air on the Travel Channel, has created a new venture, the Professional Poker Tour. Unlike World Poker Tour events, which can be entered by anyone with money to spare, PPT entries are earned by qualification. Around 200 players qualified for the PPT. Players are given exemptions of different lengths based on performance. Ron Rose, a Dayton resident and professional poker player, was given a three-year exemption to the PPT, the longest available. "It's something like the PGA," Rose said from Mashantucket, Conn., the site of the first PPT event. "Not just everybody can buy in, you have to qualify. I think that would make it more fun to watch, knowing that you're watching the best in poker." While WPT Enterprises has not yet announced where the PPT events will air, it already has started filming. The tournament at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket will finish with the final table today. The PPT will be a five-event tour with a $2.5 million total purse. There are several criteria that automatically qualify players for the PPT: making the final table at a World Poker Tour event or championship, scoring in the Top 10 on the WPT points list, winning or placing "highly" in the $10,000 buy-in event at the World Series of Poker, earning a spot on CardPlayer Magazine's Card Player of the Year Top 10 list or Poker Europa's Top 10 or being a member of the Poker Hall of Fame. Rose won the WPT's Battle of Champions, which aired on Super Bowl Sunday last year. "This qualifying process ensures that the television audience will have a chance to consistently see the most exciting, skilled poker player and the sport's all-stars," said Steve Lipscomb, president of WPT Enterprises, in a statement. "The PPT will be a league of poker titans."