Brittany S. Frederick is one of eSports' senior writers, specializing in poker and baseball coverage. She comes to eSports after twice trying out for ESPN's "Dream Job" anchoring competition, participating in the College World Series of Poker, and thinking she wanted to be Jim Harbaugh when she grew up. Born and raised in Southern California, Brittany is a sports junkie who enjoys and has played baseball, football, hockey, poker, bowling, and even competitive dodgeball, where she was a university captain. She has a particular affection for the San Diego Padres and Chargers, the Duke Blue Devils, J.J. Redick, Adam Eaton, and the Texas Western (now UTEP) Miners. But her all-time favorite franchise has to be the NFL Total Access Hollywood League's "Tastes Like Chicken," the fantasy team run by actor Paul Rudd.Like many of the people actively involved in the sport of poker today, I came to the game by watching it on television. I learned the ropes from the commentary of Phil Gordon on "Celebrity Poker Showdown," but I was soon spending my Wednesdays watching the final tables of the World Poker Tour, arguably the most recognizable name brand in poker.
It's been a few years since then, and I'm still an interested poker student. I have a good-sized stack of books lying around and I'll play a few hands on Full Tilt Poker now and then. Especially now that I'm 21, I’m ready to test the waters of serious gambling.
But I don't watch the World Poker Tour anymore. In fact, I'm not even sure I understand it.
Sometimes I go on to the WPT web site to track the whereabouts of my favorite players, like Phil or Daniel Negreanu or Howard Lederer. But when I logged on, I was besieged by anything but pure poker. There were ads for merchandise and the WPT "boot camp" and DVDs and a magazine and even WPT event planning. The World Poker Tour is no longer a professional poker circuit. It's a brand name. A business seeking to merchandise itself in any way possible.
This is why I always preferred "Celebrity Poker Showdown."
This is to say nothing of the Professional Poker Tour (PPT), which I can't really wrap my brain around either. As far as I can tell, it's a spinoff of the WPT that is strictly professionals who have to be invited to play in the PPT and maintain strict eligibility requirements to continue to play. All of that means, in this writer's humble opinion, sucks out what was good about the World Poker Tour.
What was great -- and overly hyped -- about the WPT was that anyone could play and anyone could win. It was easy for all of us to visualize ourselves being the next Chris Moneymaker or playing at a final table with Dan Harrington, because it really could happen. In fact, one of the things I want to do sometime in my life is play in a WPT event.
The PPT takes that away. Instead, it's just watching from a distance. And watching some strange multi-part format, too. I watched an entire two hours of the PPT Commerce event to come away with no resolution whatsoever. It's like smashing the WPT together with the World Series of Poker coverage on ESPN and getting a muddled mess out of it. Not to mention, you only get to see the professionals that they feel are fit to play.
Some of the people that got left off the list? Johnny Chan. Adam Schoenfeld. Maureen Feduniak. Chris Moneymaker. And my boy Phil Gordon.
Seriously.
However, Steven Lipscomb and the geniuses behind the WPT would like you not to think about that. Instead, we can buy the T-shirts and the merchandise, indulge in the camps and events and business event planning, and for all I know, there may even be Mike Sexton action figures coming to a toy store near you someday soon. Why not? It's one of the rare things they haven't merchandised about the franchise yet. Because that's what the WPT is. Its focus isn't any longer on the poker. It's a business out to make as much money as possible.
Poker today is turning into a whole conundrum of the same old thing. I'm half convinced you can watch some form of poker on TV every hour of the day. There's the WPT, the PPT, Poker Superstars on FSN, the local poker shows, and the eight billion random tournaments like the MansionPoker.net Poker Dome Challenge, whatever the heck that is. It's all noise and flashing lights and gimmicks these days, and that's disheartening. Some of us would really just like to watch normal poker tournaments on TV and enjoy ourselves without the fanfare and sales pitch.
I guess that's why I should be thankful FOX Sports carries Full Tilt Poker's "Learn From The Pros."
At least on that show I might actually learn something about poker.