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Most unsettling to the WPT crew is that the other shows use visual formats similar to the one Lipscomb developed. His is currently patent pending. "If the greatest form of flattery is imitation," says Lipscomb, "then we have been overflattered." Still, he accepts the situation, and his experience as a lawyer has left him inclined to consider legal action only as a last resort. "When a television show creates a new phenomenon," says Lipscomb, "others will imitate it, like reality TV. Everything from our hole-card cam to our graphics has been copied. But we are the Survivor of this genre.

"The real question is, Do we have an advantage over the competitors that are coming after us? Anyone who wants to take on the WPT has to take on not just the WPT and the Travel Channel, but also the resources of the Bellagio, Foxwoods, Borgata, Commerce, and the Bicycle Casino. We make the best television. The future is for us to continue to make the WPT events into the Wimbledons and the U.S. Opens of poker."

Lipscomb's plan has always been to do more than build a hit show. "The New York Times said that 50 million people were playing poker on a regular basis, and no one had branded it," he says. "This became our mission."

The next phase was merchandising, starting with chips, tables, and playing cards, what Lipscomb calls "the lowest-hanging fruit." For months prior to this past Christmas, U.S. Playing Cards was unable to make its fancy WPT chip sets fast enough to meet demand. "We are just getting started," says Kania. "We'll have 40 to 50 licensees" -- boxed DVD sets, clothing, more -- "by the end of 2005." The company just signed a multivolume book deal with HarperCollins; Mike Sexton, the show's co-host and expert commentator, wrote the first volume, released in March. Also on the way is a wireless platform that lets you play WPT poker on your cell phone. Lakes Entertainment has developed a casino table game version of WPT All-In Hold 'em Poker, to be rolled out alongside roulette and blackjack tables nationwide. Casinos wishing to deploy the game will pay fees to Lakes and Lakes will pay a fee to the WPT. The WPT brand has even been extended to scratch-off state lottery tickets in seven states.

And yet, the WPT's greatest opportunity may lie on the Internet. Internet poker has been red-hot -- even though running a U.S.-based gambling site is illegal. One leading site, PartyPoker.com, gets more than 100,000 players a day. In December, Lipscomb finalized a deal with WagerWorks to create a site that will be operated abroad and can be accessed only from outside the U.S. WPTonline.com, which will allow live poker play from legal markets, is expected to launch by summer. "It is my expectation that this will be bigger, financially, than anything else they have done," says Dennis Nielsen, an analyst for Minneapolis-based Feltl and Co., the investment banking firm that took WPT public last year.

It will also continue the global expansion. A dramatic side effect of Lipscomb's conceiving the show as if the volume were off is that people who don't speak English can follow it. By the end of 2004, the WPT had foreign distribution deals in 57 countries. "You do not even have to understand poker to enjoy it," says co-host Mike Sexton. "When someone pushes all his chips into the pot, says 'All in,' and stands up, everyone understands. That's the magic and the drama. It's the ultimate in reality TV: real people playing real poker for real money."

In the second season's "Party Poker Million" episode, for example, construction worker Chris Hinchcliffe, who qualified for the $10,000 entry by winning an online tournament with a $35 entry fee, came to the final table as the Cinderella story. He held an immense chip lead, nearly three times as much as the second-place player, despite facing four of the world's top pros. He stood to take home a cool million in his first big tournament. Instead, he made mistake after mistake -- playing bad hands too aggressively -- but still finished a respectable third. "The whole key to the poker craze," says Lipscomb, "is that you are watching ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Not only are you seeing a construction worker playing poker for a million dollars, but he's doing it against the very best. It's David versus Goliath." Sometimes, of course, Goliath wins.

Originally, Lipscomb's dream was to take the company public in five years. But the opportunity came faster than expected.

When Lipscomb and Kania went out on a road show in July 2004, visiting 13 cities in less than two weeks to sell investment bankers on the initial public offering, they met considerable skepticism. At the time, the WPT had just turned profitable, but there was still concern about poker's lowbrow image. In response, Lipscomb talked about their efforts to build and brand a sports league. "If you had been able to invest in the NFL when it started," says Kania, "you'd want in. We have transformed poker into a sports model that transcends the events themselves or the show. We have monetized the brand."

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