World Poker Tour Season VII Premiers on FSN

Beginning January 4, the World Poker Tour will begin airing its seventh season of 26 episodes at its new home on Fox Sports Net.  Also changing this year will be the World Poker Tour’s format.  In an effort to give viewers a better look into how the final tables are played out at these events and a wider variety of hands, all final tables of tournaments this season will now be aired in two one hour shows.  

Fox Sports Net is the third change in homes for the World Poker Tour.  The show spent the first five seasons on the Travel Channel, who dropped the show after deciding to make some changes to its programming line up in 2007.  The World Poker Tour then hopped over to the Game Show Network for a single season before arriving at Fox Sports Net for its seventh season.

The seventh season of the World Poker Tour saw some significant milestones such as the 100th “World Poker Tour Poker Made Millionaire” and the $400 million in prize money mark was broken.  Back in the host seat will be Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten along with hostess, Amanda Leatherman.

Episodes will be sponsored by Southwest Airlines, the official airlines of the World Poker Tour and FullTiltPoker.net.  Though Fox Sports Net is the show’s new home, fans can still catch old episodes which are still being shown on the Travel Channel and the Game Show Network.

A list of the final table participants of all of the World Poker Tour tournaments that were filmed last year for Season VII are shown below and in no particular order:

$15,000 Bellagio Cup IV
John Phan, Ralph Perry, David Benyamine, Luke Staudenmaier, Gabriel Thaler and Michael Watson.

$10,000 Legends of Poker
Paul Smith, John Phan, Mike Nguyen, Kyle Wilson, Amit Makhija and Zachary Clark.

$10,000 Borgata Poker Open
Mark Seif, Sang Kim, Jason Strochak, Andrew Knee, Daniel Heimiller and Vivek Rajkumar.

$10,000 North American Poker Championship
Kathy Liebert, Marc Karam, James Trenholm, Ryan Fisler, Gavin Smith and Glen Witmer.

$15,000 Festa al Lago
Nam Le, Bertrand Grospellier, Osmin Dardon, Adam Levy, Nenad Medic and William Mietz.

$10,000 World Poker Finals
Mike Matusow, David Pham, Charles Marchese, Jack Schanbacher, Jonathan Jaffe and Jonathan Little.

$15,000 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic
Chino Rheem, Evan McNiff, Hoyt Corkins, Amnon Filippi, Justin Young and Steve Sung.

$10,000 Southern Poker Championship
Takes place at Beau Rivage Casino, Jan. 14-17, 2009.

$10,000 L.A. Poker Championship
Takes place at Commerce Casino, Feb. 21-26, 2009.

WPT Celebrity Invitational
Takes place at Commerce Casino, Feb. 28 to March 2, 2009.

$10,000 Bay 101 Shooting Star
Takes place at Bay 101 Casino, March 16-20, 2009.

$10,000 Foxwoods Poker Classic
Takes place at Foxwoods, April 4-9, 2009.

WPT World Championship
Dates and location to be determined.