World Poker Tour (WPT) Winners
| WSOP Titles | WPT Titles | EPT Titles | Poker Earnings | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
 Gus Hansen |
1 | 4 | 0 | $11,240,678 |
| 2 |  |
 Carlos Mortensen |
2 | 3 | 0 | $11,598,083 |
| 3 |  |
 Erick Lindgren |
2 | 2 | 0 | $9,881,849 |
| 4 |  |
Howard Lederer |
2 | 2 | 0 | $6,571,538 |
| 5 |  |
Clonie Gowen |
0 | 1 | 0 | $1,639,064 |
| 6 |  |
 David Benyamine |
1 | 1 | 0 | $7,047,146 |
| 7 |  |
Erik Seidel |
8 | 1 | 0 | $21,499,344 |
| 8 |  |
 Gavin Smith |
1 | 1 | 0 | $5,959,186 |
| 9 |  |
Phil Gordon |
0 | 1 | 0 | $2,786,896 |
| 10 |  |
Phil Ivey |
9 | 1 | 0 | $17,649,220 |
| 11 |  |
 Roland de Wolfe |
1 | 1 | 1 | $5,330,556 |
| 12 |  |
JC Tran |
2 | 1 | 0 | $10,416,658 |
What is the World Poker Tour
The World Poker Tour is a series of world class poker tournaments that have been running since 2002. It’s popularity contributed massively to the poker boom which introduced millions of players into the sport of poker.
The tour was created by Steven Lipscomb who is a Television producer. Steven grew the tour into one of the most prestigious and most watched poker events on television, with large fields, large prizes and all the top players helping to propel the WPT to the top of the TV ratings.
Revolutionising Poker on TV
For the first five seasons of the tour the Travel Channel bought the rights and broadcast the TV shows. Later on this switched to GSN in the USA whilst other channels all over the World also broadcast the glitz and bright lights of the WPT final tables.
The TV shows are hosted by poker legend Mike Sexton and his co-host Vince Van Patten. Some of the most famous moments in poker have happened at WPT final tables with the camera’s watching.
Not Just for Men
Although many Female Poker Players take part in the World Poker Tour events, the tour has always ran a specialised event available only for women entrants. In 2008 they expanded this by creating a series of tournament for women called WPT Ladies with buys in ranging from $300 to $1,500. This didn’t really catch on and there are no ladies only events included in the current season schedule, although there continues to be a strong female contingent in the entrants to WPT events.
The Future of the WPT
Lipscomb remained as CEO up until November 2009 when PartyGaming (the company behind Party Poker) purchased the WPT for a fee of $12.3million.
It was also in 2009 that the WPT started to award winners of its tournaments with bracelets, very similar to the World Series of Poker which has always awarded a valuable bracelet as a trophy to each winner. This has always been popular amongst poker players with the phrase “how many bracelets has he/she won” well understood as how many WSOP events have they won. Previous winners of WPT events were also given a bracelet retroactively in order to keep it consistent and try to bring the WPT into the poker craze of counting bracelets.
PartyGaming have also introduced a second series of the tour under their PartyPoker brand name, focusing mainly on European Stops in an attempt to compete with the hugely popular European Poker Tour, which is part owned by their rival Pokerstars.