Poker News

Jesse Jones

Jesse Jones figures he took a big step forward on behalf of poker players everywhere two years ago when the World Poker Association was incorporated.

He had arrived, it seemed, at the right moment with a good idea. The retired real estate investor and cancer survivor who calls Las Vegas home, figures the best is still to come as WPA membership grows.

His experience as a pro or semi-pro poker player over about 20 years had convinced him poker needed to project a better picture than it was generally doing. As a booming business enjoyed by millions it needed, Jones decided, to take the kind of steps that would help the game win support in all the right places.

Poker needs standards that would be acknowledged in all the right places. It needs, he believes, a high gloss look of professionalism that would benefit the millions who enjoy all that poker had to offer, either as a pastime or source of income.

Jones acknowledges that he is not the first person to try and breathe life into a poker association of some kind. Other efforts faltered for reasons he suspects may have had something to do with the less than altruistic motives of the organizers.

Jones says he has never wanted more than to build sound ethical standards into the poker business. The need was obvious because by the summer of 2005 it was clear that the game was in the grip of previously unknown popularity, thanks to television shows that were bringing more people to the tables.

Poker was coming out of the back rooms and dark corners of the casino business. Jones came to poker during the mid-1980s at the old Bingo Palace which years ago morphed into the Palace Station on Las Vegas’ near west side. His initial focus was games like $2-$4 limit hold’em-”at that time there was no such thing as no limit hold’em, except, of course, in the final game of the World Series.”

Poker offered Jonesa bit of escapism in those days, time away from the pressures of his real world. “But the first time I sat down in a game at the Bingo Palace,” he grins, “I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing.”

Time went by and Jones says he found his way to the poker room at the Binion family’s Horseshoe. A little more time went by and Jones began putting the World Series of Poker on his list of things to do each year. He had moved beyond the $2-$4 games.

“We all gravitated to other poker rooms elsewhere as they began to open. When The Mirage opened in 1989 I played there for a number of years and then it was over to the Bellagio.”

The world of poker was showing signs of growth and serious poker players, Jones notes, were finding it easier than ever to spend a lot of time driving or flying from here to there in search of action.

The likely consequences of the lack of standards and professionalism that Jones believes are vital were becoming more apparent.

Jones is a three-time survivor of throat cancer and his health issues occasionally forced him to take time away from the poker tables, but when he was playing he has foundhimself drawn to the various forms of Omaha and no-limit poker.

He has about 40 tournament cashes to his credit and tournament prize money totaling about $700,000. His first cash at the World Series came in 1997 when he finished 11th in a limit hold’em event. During last summer’s World Series at the Rio he finished 15th in the $5,000 HORSE tournament.

His biggest single tournament cash also came last summer when he traveled to Australia for the Crown Aussie Millions Championship, finishing sixth in a limit hold’em tournament and pocketing $176,000.

But efforts to keep the association pointed toward continued growth and the best interests of tournament poker are never far from Jones’ mind.

As the Associations website (www.wpapoker.org) explains, “The WPA acts as the voice of tournament poker players and tournament poker leaders who support the highest ethical standards in poker competition around the world.”

The WPA now boasts membership totaling about 1,400 people in 28 countries and that number continues to increase. Jones is listed as the founder and chairman,a job description that continually has him looking for good ideas.

Just to whet a few appetites the Association will sponsor at least one and perhaps two events in conjunction with next year’s World Series of Poker. A “superb satellite” open to WPA members will be held May 29 and is expected to generate sufficient prize money to underwrite multiple entries into the WSOP’s main event.

Jones says WPA members are generally in favor of getting Internet poker legalized and regulated in the U.S., but because of limits imposed by the Association’s incorporation, it is not able to launch a lobbying effort. The goal has been to keep members informed about breaking developments affecting the issue.

“We see the Association as a source of information,” he says, “since we have to be careful about appearing to support any one effort, but my guess is that it will eventually be legalized, probably in a couple of years.”

Anything less than eventual legalization is hard to imagine, he adds, since most of the pressure being brought to bear on the issue seems to point in only one direction.

What are the WPA’s priorities for improving the world of poker and the conditions in which it is played?

There is nothing any more important, Jones explains, than the code of ethics that addresses standards of expected behavior in all corners of the poker business, everything from relationships with the news media, tournament sponsors and participants and relationships between dealers and players.

The code will be presented to members for action at a meeting during the 2008 World Series. This brings Jones to a moment of reflection as he considers the possible impact of the Association on poker.

“We are blessed, at least I certainly am blessed to be able to do what I’m doing in poker . . .

“I can’t think of a reason why every serious poker player in the world would not want to join the WPA,”

It is, he concludes, an idea whose time has come and the work of Association leaders will trickle down through the world of poker, hopefully affecting the experience of people who play the game at all levels.

“If we can join together to approve standards that are recognized worldwide, the WPA will do for poker what the PGS has done for golf.”

Could anything be better, his tone seems to ask.

Photo by: Flipchip / LasVegasVegas.com

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