/ Matthew Pitt / 18 February 2011 / Leave a Comment 
Annie Duke, the "brains" behind the operation
Federated Sports and Gaming and the Palms Casino Resort have released the full schedule for their upcoming professional poker tour. This will be the first-ever season of the professional poker league and a true test of whether it can compete with the many other tours now on the tournament circuit.
Plans to start the league were announced in January but at that time there were no confirmed dates but now it looks like August 12 is going to be the beginning of the league. Between August 12-15 there will be a $1,500 "Pro-Am" tournament where the top nine finishers are awarded a temporary pass to the $20,000 Main Event, which will otherwise be invite only. On August 14 there will be a charity tournament, followed by the Main Event between August 16-19.
Three other events will take place between September 30 - October 7, December 1-10 and January 20-27 with the Championship, a $1,000,000 freeroll for the top 27 players in the league standings being held on January 29-30. As an extra twist, and one that I think is completely unneeded, each of the Main Events will be played in a different format. According to the press release from Federated Sports and Gaming each of the four Main Events will "feature different formats of No-Limit Texas Hold'em, including six-handed play, a heads-up tournament with an innovative seeding structure, and a special multi-format tournament to round out the season"
The league's Commissioner, Annie Duke explained the reason for this by saying, "We decided to vary the format of our events to showcase and challenge the skill of the best live tournament players in the world." Personally I would prefer to see one format used for all four Main Event and if I am entirely honest I would love to see the league fail purely because Duke is involved with it!
Although I will always embrace anything that shows the game of poker to the masses and keeps the game alive I simply do not see how this league will benefit any of us. The sounds coming out of the Federated Sports and Gaming camp seem to suggest that the field will be full of washed up old school live pros who simply cannot cut it with the young guns of today's game and want a platform to pass money around to each other. Step forward Phil Hellmuth.
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