The Ladies World Poker Tour is due to conclude in Las Vegas.

The WPT organizers have decided to give 15% of the prize money to a breast cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which they have supported in the past. This has irritated a number of players.

It is not that they are against charity. They have no issue if each player contributes to charity. They are against the funds coming from the prize money, because then only the winner is contributing a whopping amount and the others are not contributing anything.

The Ladies WPT final has a buy-in of $1,500 and expects to draw about 300 entries making a gross prize of $450,000. With 3% to be deducted for tournament staff and 15% for the charity the amount gets reduced to $369,000. And after the entry fee of $25,500 for the winner to the WPT Championship is deducted the cash in hand works out to only $343,500. This for many is not worth the trouble of playing such a competitive tournament. Susie Isaacs, a former WSOP Ladies Event winner, and Lisa Adams, the host of Poker Talk America, have already withdrawn their names from the championship. Susie Isaacs has gone on record saying that she would have willingly donated 5% of her winnings but a compulsory 15% deducted is not in order.

Lisa Adams has dubbed the event as a charity event and not a championship and rightly so because this is the only poker championship event that has decided to give to charity from the pool money. The women have found a supporter in Jesse Jones. Jones is the founder and chairman emeritus of the World Poker Association. He has written to the WPT stating that their action is unfair to the women.

Steve Lipscomb, the CEO of WPT, has defended his organization’s action. In the first instance he says that a ladies championship is financially unviable for WPT. In fact there has been opposition from shareholders who see this event as an erosion of their wealth. The sole reason for this event is to promote women professionals and encourage more women to take up poker and he feels that the women poker players should understand this. By contributing to the breast cancer charity WPT is also helping a cause that should be dear to women. He was saddened that the good intentions of WPT had struck a wrong chord. However he added that the decision was final and the tournament would be held as decided.

It is evident that WPT sees merit in the arguments put forward by the opponents of this scheme. Because Lipscomb added that if the Ladies WPT tour was held next year they would reconsider how the charity element is to be handled. WPT is open to all ideas. One suggested by Jesse Jones is that WPT makes a donation per player from its own funds, simultaneously requiring each player to make a matching contribution. This would definitely reduce the burden on the winner.

Author:  Renee Kingsley