[clevfan]

Jul. 22, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: A sure sign of the big time

Poker stars get the lawyers involved


What's the surest sign that poker has reached the big time in recreational and entertainment circles? The growth of tournaments and purses? Casino investments in poker rooms? The number of televised card games? Perhaps.

But you know poker has really arrived when lawyers start fighting for a share of the pot.

A handful of professional poker players are going all-in against a leading tour -- and they're not bluffing. They allege in an antitrust lawsuit that WPT Enterprises Inc., the operator of the World Poker Tour, forces them to forfeit the rights to their likenesses before allowing them to enter tournaments. WPT Enterprises then uses those likenesses to promote products such as video games without giving poker's biggest personalities a cut.

With the World Series of Poker under way in Las Vegas, previous champions Joseph Hachem and Greg Raymer and five other pros want to void the contracts they signed with WPT Enterprises to enter previous tournaments. They don't want their own commercial endeavors competing against images of themselves that benefit only WPT.

Four or five years ago, these poker players would have donated a kidney and their firstborn to play in televised tournaments for huge purses. "All of us as poker players were degenerates until the World Poker Tour started the whole ball rolling," said 51-year-old poker professional Barry Greenstein, who is not a party in the lawsuit.

These gamblers, many of whom have agents, are getting rich off poker's runaway popularity. If they no longer want to play on the World Poker Tour under the terms of these contracts, they're certainly free to start a competing association. But that might require actual work -- beyond showing up, sitting down and playing cards, of course. And even more lawyers.

Perhaps they'd rather grind it out in back-room games again. No contingency fees there.