Duke on WPT row

The World Poker Tour has maintained for a while that it has a very standard production release, but anybody who’s worked in TV knows that it’s not a standard release. The WPT [release] is in perpetuity, throughout the universe and any media known and unknown. So they could just put streaming video of you on a slot machine, for example, and not pay you or tell you what’s going to happen.

From November 2005 until May 2006 I spent a lot of my money with my lawyer trying to get them to be fair about the release. They basically refused, so I called up some friends who were unhappy with it and said that at some point we have to do something, otherwise it’s never going to change.

I think it’s a shame [the WPT] is not taking the attitude of working with the players and making it a fair system for everybody.

I’ve also heard some people say it doesn’t affect them because they’re not famous. But if you enter one of these poker tournaments with the intention of winning, which I think everyone who enters does, trust me, when you make that final table that release affects you. You might be someone who never wants to endorse a product and [the WPT] doesn’t give you that right to say no. As the release stands now, if I signed it and they opened up WPT porn they could put my face on it and I wouldn’t be able to say anything.

Back in the day, the movie studios had the same attitude: we made you famous, so we basically own you. Same thing in sports – the NFL coaches had a similar situation. The way that the WPT is set up now is like if David Beckham had to pay to play. So imagine he was putting money into a salary pool and every time he won a game he got part of that money back. So in effect he’s paying his own salary and a fee to the team to play (because we have to pay a fee on top that we don’t get back). Then let’s say Nike comes calling to get him to endorse, and they call up the team not him, and they get the money. If that was the case everybody would say, “That’s so unfair, because he deserves the money.” But that’s exactly what’s happening now. It would be like Manchester United saying, “We made him famous – without us he wouldn’t exist, so we decide what happens with his name.” That battle was fought a long time ago in sports, and people now realise it’s a person’s talent that makes them famous, not the team itself.

But that’s basically the argument of the WPT – we made them famous, they should be grateful, and in order for us to have a successful business we need these name rights. But the World Series of Poker doesn’t need these name rights and it seems to be pretty successful.

TV edit

There’s one other issue that the WPT does that’s upsetting to me as a player. It takes tournaments that have a natural blind structure, and because of the taping schedule for the final table, the blind structure is altered at that point. And remember, the WPT hasn’t put a dime into the prize pool. The WPT Championship event has 90-minute blind levels with no doubles… until the final table. This is the biggest WPT event of the year – it costs $25,500 to play in this – and when you get to the final table the blinds are rolled back to an hour, and they double, double, double. And when it gets to the heads-up match they roll back to 30 minutes, exactly at the point when all the money is at stake.

Now, if the WPT put up the money it could do whatever it wanted with the blind structure, but it doesn’t put up a dime of the money; it’s altering blind structures and making it so all the skill is taken out of the game. But it doesn’t have to do that. When ESPN films the World Series it allows the final table to play out naturally, whether it takes four hours or 12 hours.

I’ve never asked anybody else not to play or tried to organise a boycott against the WPT. The only thing I’ve ever said to any player is please read the release, have a lawyer read it and make sure you understand the rights that you’re signing away.