Jackpot!

Before Steve Lipscomb launched the World Poker Tour, poker had a vaguely seedy rep. Now it's a national obsession, and the WPT is a public company with a market cap of $300 million. How Lipscomb built his empire -- without risking a cent.

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Layne Flack needs a six. His opponent has just called Flack's raise, placing Flack's entire stack of chips, several hundred thousand dollars' worth, in jeopardy. This is happening in the World Poker Tour's "arena," an elevated table surrounded by flashing lights, multiple cameras, and hundreds of wide-eyed fans. The last two cards are about to be dealt.

Backstage, Steve Lipscomb is barking instructions into a headset while pacing and gesturing wildly in front of a bank of television monitors. Each monitor corresponds to a different camera, with the name of its operator on a piece of masking tape above the screen, and Lipscomb shouts nonstop: "Mike! Zoom in on the chips. Dave, good work, now pan left. Chuck, let's get the audience. I need some suspense."

For an average-looking guy of average size, Lipscomb has a big personality. As always, he's dressed in a casual two-piece suit and open-collared shirt. He openly roots for players during big hands, favoring not one over the other but the more dramatic outcome over the more mundane. This approach has helped him create one of the highest rated shows in the history of cable. He never sits, stopping his shifting and gesturing only long enough to drink a soda. He even directs the audience, relaying instructions to staffers within the arena, who in turn cue the fans when to gasp, clap, or look shocked -- using expressions Lipscomb himself rehearsed with them before the final table began. The only thing he doesn't do is answer his cell phone, which rings constantly.

Back at the table, the cards are dealt, and Flack gets his six. He cannot contain a smile. His opponent shakes hands graciously but is clearly seething, having done everything right and lost because of very bad luck. Flack will go on to win the tournament -- a fact that will be widely noted in bars and chatrooms and around water coolers. Overnight, "I'm all in!" has become a catch phrase. By some estimates, more than 50 million Americans are into poker, and Lipscomb -- founder and president of the World Poker Tour -- has made it his mission to build the game's premier brand. In three short years he has taken poker from smoky backrooms to the Nasdaq and prime-time television, with ratings that regularly top network coverage of the NBA and PGA.

Now 43, Steve Lipscomb was a lawyer by trade and an entrepreneur at heart, which led to his first business, an attorney-referral service. But relatively late in life, he changed course. The change came after Lipscomb, who grew up in Knoxville, Tenn., and came from a long line of Baptist ministers, watched his deeply religious mother continue the family tradition by entering the seminary -- only to encounter sex discrimination that she felt stopped her rise through the hierarchy of the Southern Baptist Church. Believing the world needed to know, an angry Lipscomb decided to make a documentary film.

He sold his business, taught himself the basics of filmmaking, and dove in. The result, Battle for the Minds, documented the rise of fundamentalism within the church and went on to win critical acclaim and numerous awards. It was selected to be one of 10 films shown on PBS's Point of View, which brought Lipscomb to the attention of producer Norman Lear. Lipscomb began making shows with Lear, which is how he found himself filming an inside look at the World Series of Poker, the sport's marquee annual event -- one with which he was personally familiar. He had once entered a $100 satellite tournament just for fun and won a $10,000 seat at the main event. "I never expected to win," he says. "I called my wife, who was pregnant with our first child, and told her I'd had fun and didn't care if I didn't play the rest of the tournament, which would have taken several more days. Then I told her first prize was a million dollars and she said I could stay."

When Lipscomb first saw televised poker, it was being shown by ESPN: "Worse than watching paint dry," he says.

He didn't win, but poker was now in his blood. And what he saw filming the World Series of Poker changed his life. He saw firsthand the culture, the characters, and the fans. He also concluded that ESPN, which aired the WSOP, was doing a terrible job. "Worse than watching paint dry," he recalls.

Lipscomb knew he could make poker more exciting to watch, but he also had a more ambitious vision: to create a league akin to the major professional sports, one that would lead to merchandising, foreign licensing, Internet competition, and spinoffs. As he now says, "I view us today as a Microsoft, not an IBM," meaning that he developed the show not as a product but as a platform.

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