players file lawsuit against WPT

Just recently on the 19th of July Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, Andy Bloch, Phil Gordon, Chris Ferguson, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem have filed an antitrust lawsuit against the WPT. It appears that before you enter a WPT event you must sign a waiver that allows the WPT to use your image and likeliness in any way or form without any legal obligation to give you any % of money. Now the reason the lawsuit was filed was because of all the other contracts that the players have with other companies. If by entering a WPT event a signing thier waver form these players are violating thier contracts. During the meantime these players are not participating in any of the WPT events until the lawsuit is done with. Another thing on this topic is that all the casinos that have contracts with the WPT cannot hold any other major tournaments until 2009 and the tournament structure must be what the WPT decides. So this is hurting the poker world by limiting the number of events these casinos can hold and for the players who make a living off the game.

Well that should probably be ammended to say major BROADCASTED tournaments. The Borgata had some major level ($1,000, $2,000, $5,000 buy in) tourneys as part of their Borgata Summer Open.

My guess is that no high stakes tournaments with other major poker tour is allowed at those casinos. So I guess WSOP cant hold tournaments cant be held at the same places as the WPT.

Did you see that Howard even sighted a time when he wanted to film an interview IN A HOTEL ROOM in a WPT-contracted hotel and the hotel wouldn't let him because it could violate their WPT contract? What a joke!!!

The WPT harps on the fact that they don't make any money and that they only break even and do it "for the game". Well, if they quit being this possessive, maybe they'd make more money.

I think they want to keep the big-time pros away to bring in more amateur buy-ins. They think more dead money will come and play if more players think they can win with less pros there. Just a theory.

I do agree about expanding thier tourney for more amateurs, but the main point I believe is that they use thier faces and likenesses to promote things that they have no say in. Also they are not getting any compensation for the use of thier faces and likeness in video games and commercials and so forth. The WPT seems like they are a greedy empire that cares nothing for the players involved. just my two cents.